“How could you be anybody else, ma’am?...  You couldn’t.”

“I believe I have heard Dr. Vivian speak of you.  Possibly,” she said, with stony bitterness, “you have heard of me in the same way?”

The girl seemed to shrink a little at her tone.  “Oh, ma’am—­no!  To me!  No, ma’am!  He wouldn’t ...”

“But he is a great friend of yours?”

Kern raised a hand to her heart, understanding only too much that was not so.  It was a glorious moment for her, and a terrible one.

“No, ma’am,” said she, shaking her head a number of times.  “I’m only his charity sick.”

She added, as if to make the repudiation complete:  “Mr. V.V.’s friends are ladies, ma’am.”

“Mr. V.V.?”

Confronted by her damning slip, the young person turned scarlet, but she stood her ground with a little gasp.

“A nickname, ma’am, that all his sick call him by....”

A fair enough rally, no doubt, but on the whole it accomplished nothing.  Just in the middle of it, the lady had shut the door in the small vulgarian’s face.

Carlisle clutched the two letters to her breast.  The door having been shut, she was alone in the world.  She went up two flights in the Sunday afternoon stillness, and locked herself in her room.  Mamma should not enter here on her gliding heels.

So this, after all, was what he meant by “seeing.”  Having decoyed her with false hopes for five days, he struck from ambush, giving her no chance to speak for herself.  Well, she would be hard, too.  She would make no answer, and when he spoke, she would deny ...

That the worst had now come to the worst, she had not entertained a doubt.  Accordingly the emotional revulsion was strong when, breaking open the envelope with cold fingers, Carlisle found that the letter within was in a different handwriting from the superscription.  It was not from Dr. Vivian at all.

However, her instant uprush of relief was somewhat mitigated when she saw—­as she did in the first glance, for this hand had been not unfamiliar to her once—­that the letter Vivian enclosed to her was from Jack Dalhousie.

Standing rigid by the window, she read with parted lips: 

     WEYMOUTH, May 14th.

     DEAR V.V.: 

I’d have answered your letter earlier only I haven’t had any heart for writing letters.  Fate has knocked me out again.  God knows I’ve tried, and cut out the drink, and worked hard, and suffered agonies of the damned, but it doesn’t do any good.  The world isn’t big enough for people like me to hide in, and the only thing I can’t understand is why people like me are ever born.  What’s the use of it all, V.V., I can’t see to save my life.  The trouble all came from a fellow named Bellows, from home, a machinery salesman with T.B.  Wicke Sons, you may know him, who dropped off the train here a week ago Saturday.