"My dear, dear Perry!" said she again.
"And yet," said I, "all this is admittedly his own fault, and, as I think Heraclitus says: 'Suffering is the inevitable consequence of Sin, or Folly.'"
"And he is well?" she asked; "quite—quite well?"
"He is," said I.
"Thank God!" she whispered. "Tell me," she went on, "is he so very, very poor—is he much altered? I have not seen him for a whole, long year."
"Why, a year is apt to change a man," I answered. "Adversity is a hard school, but, sometimes, a very good one."
"Were he changed, no matter how—were he a beggar upon the roads, I should love him—always!" said she, speaking in that soft, caressing voice which only the best of women possess.
"Yes, I had guessed as much," said I, and found myself sighing.
"A year is a long, long time, and we were to have been married this month, but my father quarrelled with him and forbade him the house, so poor Perry went back to London. Then we heard he was ruined, and I almost died with grief—you see, his very poverty only made me love him the more. Yesterday—that man—"
"Sir Harry Mortimer?" said I.