During this time a correspondence, more or less regular, was maintained between Miss Altifiorla and Sir Francis Geraldine. Sir Francis had gone to Scotland for the shooting, and rather liked the interest of Miss Altifiorla\'s letters. It must be understood that it had commenced with the lady rather than the gentleman. But that was a fact of which he was hardly aware. She had written him a short note in answer to some questions he had asked respecting Mrs. Western when he had been in Exeter, and this she had done in such a manner as to make sure of the coming of a further letter. The further letter had come and thus the correspondence had been commenced. It was no doubt chiefly in regard to Mrs. Western; or at first pretended to be so. Miss Altifiorla thought it right to speak always of her old friend with affectionate kindness;—but still with considerable severity. The affectionate kindness might go for what it was worth; but it was the severity, or rather the sarcasm, which gratified Sir Francis. And then Miss Altifiorla gradually adopted a familiar strain into which Sir Francis fell readily enough. In fact Sir Francis found that a young woman who would joke with him, and appear to follow his lead in her joking, was more to his taste than an austere beauty such as had been his last love.

"Lady Grant is here at this moment," Miss Altifiorla said in one of her letters. She had by this time fallen into that familiar style of writing which hardly declared whether it belonged to a man\'s letter or a woman\'s. "I suppose you know who Lady Grant is. She is your fortunate rival\'s magnificent widowed sister, and has come here I presume to endeavour to set matters right. Whether she will succeed may be doubtful. She is the exact ditto of her brother, who of all human beings gives himself the finest airs. But Cecilia since her separation has given herself airs too, and now leads her lonely life with her nose high among the stars. Poor dear Cecilia! her misfortunes do not become her, and I think they have hardly been deserved. They are all the result of your bitter vengeance, and though I must say that she in sort deserves it, I think that you might have spared her. After all she has done you no harm. Consider where you would be with Cecilia Holt for your wife and guardian. Hard though you are, I do not think you would have been hard enough to treat her as he has done. Indeed there is an audacity about his conduct to which I know no parallel. Fancy a man marrying a wife and then instantly bidding her go home to her mother because he finds that she once liked another man better than himself! I wonder whether the law couldn\'t touch him! But you have escaped from all that, and I really can\'t understand why you should be so awfully cruel to the poor girl." Then she signed herself "Yours always, F. A." as though she had not been a woman at all.

In all this there was much guile. She had already taken the length of his foot, and knew how to flatter him, and to cheat him at the same time. "That poor young woman of mine seems to have got into difficulties," he said to Dick Ross, who had gone down with him to Scotland.

"You have made the difficulties for her," said Dick.

"Well; I paved the way perhaps. That was only justice. Did she think that she was going to hit me and that she wasn\'t to be hit in return?"

"A woman," growled Dick.

"Women are human beings the same as men, and when they make themselves beasts have got to be punished. You can\'t horsewhip a woman; but if you look at it all round I don\'t see that she ought to get off so much better than a man. She is a human creature and ought to be made to feel as a man feels."

But this did not suit Dick\'s morality or his sense of chivalry. According to his thinking a woman in such matters ought to be allowed to do as she pleased, and the punishment, if punishment there is to be, must come from the outside. "I shouldn\'t like to have done it; that\'s all."

"You\'ve always treated women well; haven\'t you?"

"I don\'t say that. I don\'t know that I\'ve ever treated anybody particularly well. But I never set my wits to work to take my revenge on a woman."

"Look here, old fellow," said Sir Francis. "You had better contrive to make yourself less disagreeable or else you and I must part. If you think that I am going to be lectured by you, you\'re mistaken."

"You ask me, and how can I help answering you? It was a shabby trick. And now you may bluster as much as you please." Then the two sat together, smoking in silence for five minutes. It was after breakfast on a rainy day, such as always made Dick Ross miserable for the time. He had to think of creditors whom he could not pay, and of his future life which did not lie easily open before him, and of all the years which he had misused. Circumstances had lately thrown him much into the power of this man whom he heartily disliked and despised, but at whose hands he had been willing to accept many of the luxuries of his life. But still he resolved not to be put down in the expression of his opinions, although he might in truth be turned off at a moment\'s notice. "You are corresponding with that old woman now?"

"What do you know about my correspondence?"

"I know just what you told me. That letter there is from the lady with the Italian name. She has more mischief even than you have, I believe." At hearing this Sir Francis only laughed. "If you don\'t take care she\'ll make you marry her, and then where will you be?"

"Where would you be, old fellow?"

"It don\'t much matter where I should be," said poor Dick. "There\'s a revolver up-stairs and I sometimes think that I had better use it. I\'ve nothing but myself to look after. I\'ve no baronetcy and no estate, and can destroy none but myself. You can\'t hurt me very much. I\'ll tell you what it is, Geraldine. You want a wife so that you may cut out your cousin from the property. You\'re a good-looking fellow and you can talk, and, as chance would have it, you had, I imagine, got hold of a true lady. But she found you out."

"What did she find out?"

"The sort of fellow that you are. She met you among the Dean\'s people, and had to find you out before she knew you. However she did before it was too late, and she gave you the sack."

"That\'s your idea."

"She did," said Dick boldly. "And there should have been an end of it. I don\'t say but what it might have been as well for you as for her. But it suited you to have your revenge, and you\'ve had it."

"I rather think I have," said Sir Francis.

"But you\'ve got a woman to help you in getting it who seems to have been as spiteful as you, without any excuse. I shouldn\'t think that she\'d make a good wife. But if you don\'t take care she\'ll be yours." Then Dick got up and walked out of the room with his pipe in his mouth, and went into his bedroom, thinking that it might be as well for him to pack up and take his departure. The quarters they were in were, as he declared to himself, "beastly" in wet weather; but his shirts hadn\'t come from the wash, and he had no vehicle to take him to the railway station without sending for a fly. And after all what he had said to Sir Francis was not much worse than what had often been said before. So he chucked off his slippers, and threw himself upon the bed, thinking that he might as well endeavour to get through the morning by going to sleep.

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