That was an ugly office,
if you will. It was a moral bagatelle to the treacherous trick he
was to play me a few weeks later. The second offence, on the other
hand, was to prove the less serious of the two against society, and
might in itself have been published to the world years ago. There
have been private reasons for my reticence. The affair was not only
too intimately mine, and too discreditable to Raffles. One other
was involved in it, one dearer to me than Raffles himself, one whose
name shall not even now be sullied by association with ours.
Suffice it that I had been engaged to her before that mad March
deed. True, her people called it "an understanding," and frowned
even upon that, as well they might. But their authority was not
direct; we bowed to it as an act of politic grace; between us, all
was well but my unworthiness. That may be gauged when I confess
that this was how the matter stood on the night I gave a worthless
check for my losses at baccarat, and afterward turned to Raffles in
my need. Even after that I saw her sometimes. But I let her guess
that there was more upon my soul than she must ever share, and at
last I had written to end it all.
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