Clara Hopgood

Mrs Caffyn was unhappy, and made up her mind that she would talk to

Frank herself. She had learned enough about him from the two

sisters, especially from Clara, to make her believe that, with a very

little management, she could bring him back to Madge. The difficulty

was to see him without his father's knowledge. At last she

determined to write to him, and she made her son-in-law address the

envelope and mark it private. This is what she said:

'DEAR SIR,--Although unbeknown to you, I take the liberty of telling

you as M. H. is alivin' here with me, and somebody else as I think

you ought to see, but perhaps I'd better have a word or two with you

myself, if not quite ill-convenient to you, and maybe you'll be kind

enough to say how that's to be done to your obedient, humble servant,--'MRS CAFFYN.'

She thought this very diplomatic, inasmuch as nobody but Frank could

possibly suspect what the letter meant. It went to Stoke Newington,

but, alas! he was in Germany, and poor Mrs Caffyn had to wait a week

before she received a reply. Frank of course understood it.

Although he had thought about Madge continually, he had become

calmer. He saw, it is true, that there was no stability in his

position, and that he could not possibly remain where he was. Had

Madge been the commonest of the common, and his relationship to her

the commonest of the common, he could not permit her to cast herself

loose from him for ever and take upon herself the whole burden of his

misdeed. But he did not know what to do, and, as successive

considerations and reconsiderations ended in nothing, and the

distractions of a foreign country were so numerous, Madge had for a

time been put aside, like a huge bill which we cannot pay, and which

staggers us. We therefore docket it, and hide it in the desk, and we

imagine we have done something. Once again, however, the flame leapt

up out of the ashes, vivid as ever. Once again the thought that he

had been so close to Madge, and that she had yielded to him, touched

him with peculiar tenderness, and it seemed impossible to part

himself from her. To a man with any of the nobler qualities of man

it is not only a sense of honour which binds him to a woman who has

given him all she has to give. Separation seems unnatural,

monstrous, a divorce from himself; it is not she alone, but it is

himself whom he abandons. Frank's duty, too, pointed imperiously to

the path he ought to take, duty to the child as well as to the

mother. He determined to go home, secretly; Mrs Caffyn would not

have written if she had not seen good reason for believing that Madge

still belonged to him. He made up his mind to start the next day,

but when the next day came, instructions to go immediately to Hamburg

arrived from his father. There were rumours of the insolvency of a

house with which Mr Palmer dealt; inquiries were necessary which

could better be made personally, and if these rumours were correct,

as Mr Palmer believed them to be, his agency must be transferred to

some other firm. There was now no possibility of a journey to

England. For a moment he debated whether, when he was at Hamburg, he

could not slip over to London, but it would be dangerous. Further

orders might come from his father, and the failure to acknowledge

them would lead to evasion, and perhaps to discovery. He must,

therefore, content himself with a written explanation to Mrs Caffyn

why he could not meet her, and there should be one more effort to

make atonement to Madge. This was what went to Mrs Caffyn, and to

her lodger: