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a solicitor, as I think I have told you. She waa a young girl in a music-shop ; and it was represented to me that it would be beneath my position to marry her. Hence the result.”

“Well, all I can say is that after twenty years it is probably too late to think of mending such a matter, It has doubtless by this time mended itself. You had better dismiss it from your mind as an evil past your control. Of course, if mother and daughter are alive, or either, you might settle something upon them, if you were inclined, and had it to spare.”

“Well, | hayen’t much to spare, and I have relations in narrow circumstances — perhaps narrower than theirs. But that is not the point. Were I ever so rich I feel I could not rectify the past by money. I did not promise to enrich her. On the contrary, I told her it would probably be dire poverty for both of us, But I did promise to make her my wife.”

“Then find her and do it,” said the doctor, jocularly, as be rose to leave.

“Ah, Bindon. That, of course, is the obvious jeat.

But I haven’t the slightest desire for marnage ; I am quite content to live as I have lived. I am a bachelor by natare-and instinct and habit and everything. Besides, though I respect her still (for she wag not an atom to blame), I haven't any shadow of love for her. In my mind she exists as one of those women you think well of, but find uninteresting. It would be purely with the idea of putting wrong right that I should hunt her up, and propose to do it off-hand,”

“You don't think of it serioualy?” said his surprised friend.

“I sometimes think that I would, if it were practicable; simply, as I say, to recover my sense of being a man of honor.”

“I wish you luck in the enterprise,” said Dr. Bin-