Hearing no more from the glazier she hoped the difficulty was past.  But another week only had gone by, when, as she was pacing the Giant’s Walk (the name given to the promenade), she met the same personage in the company of a fat woman carrying a bundle.

‘This is the lady, my dear,’ he said to his companion.  ’This, ma’am, is my wife.  We’ve come to settle in the town for a time, if so be we can find room.’

‘That you won’t do,’ said she.  ’Nobody can live here who is not privileged.’

‘I am privileged,’ said the glazier, ‘by my trade.’

Baptista went on, but in the afternoon she received a visit from the man’s wife.  This honest woman began to depict, in forcible colours, the necessity for keeping up the concealment.

‘I will intercede with my husband, ma’am,’ she said.  ’He’s a true man if rightly managed; and I’ll beg him to consider your position.  ’Tis a very nice house you’ve got here,’ she added, glancing round, ’and well worth a little sacrifice to keep it.’

The unlucky Baptista staved off the danger on this third occasion as she had done on the previous two.  But she formed a resolve that, if the attack were once more to be repeated she would face a revelation—­worse though that must now be than before she had attempted to purchase silence by bribes.  Her tormentors, never believing her capable of acting upon such an intention, came again; but she shut the door in their faces.  They retreated, muttering something; but she went to the back of the house, where David Heddegan was.

She looked at him, unconscious of all.  The case was serious; she knew that well; and all the more serious in that she liked him better now than she had done at first.  Yet, as she herself began to see, the secret was one that was sure to disclose itself.  Her name and Charles’s stood indelibly written in the registers; and though a month only had passed as yet it was a wonder that his clandestine union with her had not already been discovered by his friends.  Thus spurring herself to the inevitable, she spoke to Heddegan.

‘David, come indoors.  I have something to tell you.’

He hardly regarded her at first.  She had discerned that during the last week or two he had seemed preoccupied, as if some private business harassed him.  She repeated her request.  He replied with a sigh, ‘Yes, certainly, mee deer.’

When they had reached the sitting-room and shut the door she repeated, faintly, ’David, I have something to tell you—­a sort of tragedy I have concealed.  You will hate me for having so far deceived you; but perhaps my telling you voluntarily will make you think a little better of me than you would do otherwise.’

‘Tragedy?’ he said, awakening to interest.  ’Much you can know about tragedies, mee deer, that have been in the world so short a time!’

She saw that he suspected nothing, and it made her task the harder.  But on she went steadily.  ’It is about something that happened before we were married,’ she said.