"Because it was the truth. I didn't mean to let it stay, Mr.

Winterborne; but when I was going to rub it out you came, and I was

obliged to run off."

"Having prophesied one thing, why did you alter it to another? Your

predictions can't be worth much."

"I have not altered it."

"But you have."

"No."

"It is altered. Go and see."

She went, and read that, in spite of losing his dwelling-place, he

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would KEEP his Grace. Marty came back surprised.

"Well, I never," she said. "Who can have made such nonsense of it?"

"Who, indeed?" said he.

"I have rubbed it all out, as the point of it is quite gone."

"You'd no business to rub it out. I didn't tell you to. I meant to

let it stay a little longer."

"Some idle boy did it, no doubt," she murmured.

As this seemed very probable, and the actual perpetrator was

unsuspected, Winterborne said no more, and dismissed the matter from

his mind.

From this day of his life onward for a considerable time, Winterborne,

though not absolutely out of his house as yet, retired into the

background of human life and action thereabout--a feat not particularly

difficult of performance anywhere when the doer has the assistance of a

lost prestige. Grace, thinking that Winterborne saw her write, made no

further sign, and the frail bark of fidelity that she had thus timidly

launched was stranded and lost.




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