I have lied to you.
'I am _not_ living in this place of my free will. I am _not_
devoting myself to works of charity. I am--no, no, I was--merely a
poor gentleman, who, on a certain day, found that he had wasted his
substance in a foolish speculation, and who, ashamed to take his
friends into his confidence, fled to a life of miserable obscurity.
You see that I have added disgrace to misfortune. I will not tell you
how very near I came to something still worse.
'I have been serving an apprenticeship to a certain handicraft which
will, I doubt not, enable me so to supplement my own scanty resources
that I shall be in better circum than hitherto. I entreat you to
forgive me, if you can, and henceforth to forget
Yours unworthily,
'S. V. TYMPERLEY.'
MISS RODNEY'S LEISURE
A young woman of about eight-and-twenty, in tailor-made costume, with
unadorned hat of brown felt, and irreproachable umbrella; a young woman who
walked faster than any one in Wattleborough, yet never looked hurried; who
crossed a muddy street seemingly without a thought for her skirts, yet
somehow was never splashed; who held up her head like one thoroughly at
home in the world, and frequently smiled at her own thoughts.
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