us quite right with each other; nor, for herself, had it made her less ashamed of her heartless behaviour that poor Pallant after all turned out no great catch. I had forgiven her; I had not felt that it was any thing but an escape not to have married a girl who had it in her to take back her given word and break a fellow's heart, for mere flesh-pots—or the shallow promise, as it pitifully proved, of flesh-pots; moreover we had met since then, on the occasion of my former visit to Europe; we had looked each other in the eyes, we had pretended to be free friends and had talked of the wickedness of the world as composedly as if we were the only just, the only pure. I knew then what she had given out—that I had driven her off by my insane jealousy before she ever thought of Henry Pallant, before she had ever seen him. This had not been then and it could not be to-day a ground of real reunion, especially if you add to it that she knew perfectly what I thought of her. It is my belief that it does not often minister to friendship that your friend shall know your real opinion, for he knows it mainly when it is unfavourable, and this is especially the case when (if the solecism may pass) he is a woman. I had not followed Mrs. Pallant's fortunes; the years elapsed, for me, in my own country, whereas she led her life, which I vaguely believed to be difficult after her husband's death—virtually that of a bankrupt—in foreign lands. I heard of her from time to time; always as 'established' somewhere, but on each occasion in a different place. She drifted from country to country, and if she had been of a hard composition at the beginning it could never occur to me that her struggle with society, as it might be called, would
