"You shall be put in the lock-up if you are caught prowling about any one's residence after this."
"And what would you gain by that?" she says, cunningly.
While Blair, sighing for woman's tact, wishes Mrs. Dale was with him, when a sudden thought occurs to him; rising, as if to go, he says, with assumed carelessness:
"Very well; if you won't help yourself and me, by making a clean breast of it, things will have to take their own course, and that man," indicating by a gesture the photograph of Mr. Cobbe, "and that man will be lost to you, as the husband of a certain lady in the north-west end."
At this she is humble enough, her tears bursting afresh.
"Oh, no, no; I am just crazy to-night, that my Phil is with her; and I have been crying my eyes out, because I daren't go up, because of you coming out to make me tell on him; oh, oh, oh."
"But can't you see, girl, that this is the only way you will keep him to yourself, by telling what hold you have on him. If you don't, as sure as you are alive, he will marry yonder lady, and spurn you like a worm under his heel," he said, with angry impatience.
"Oh, never; oh, oh, oh, me! I suppose I had best tell, then." And going to the trunk, taking out a small box, which she unlocks with a key, suspended by a ribbon around her neck, she takes therefrom a few lines written on half a sheet of paper, handing it to him. It read:
"Simcoe St., March 16.
"Dearest Love,—Be sure and be on time at the Union Depot. It's all nonsense your asking me to marry you before we start. It's not common sense of you. The other women who want me would tear your pretty eyes out. No, Betty, my petty. I will marry you when we get to Buffalo; not before; so do not make me angry, when you ought to be the happiest woman in Toronto at going away with your own
"Philip."
"Did he marry you?" asked Blair, placing the paper carefully in his pocket-book.