"Where would it please you, ma'am, for that person to pass the night?" he inquired.

Dolly went out into the hall where sat one of the men who had been such unwelcome visitors at Homewood.

Recognising her, he stood up and touched his forehead respectfully.

"It is you then," she remarked; "that is fortunate. Of course, there is no necessity for you to remain here."

"I am afraid I must, ma'am, orders is orders, and—"

"You can leave quite easily," she interrupted, "and you know that. You can come back in the morning. You must dress in black and wear a white cravat, and ask for Mr. Williams, and the servants will imagine you come from the undertaker. I will give you a sovereign if you oblige me in this matter, and I am sure Lord Darsham will not forget you either. Take the key with you if you like."

Still the man hesitated. He looked at the sovereign lying in his hand, and then at Mrs. Mortomley. Then he ventured,

"Is—is there anything else in? I know you are a lady as wouldn't deceive me."

"Nothing," she answered.

"Or expected?" he went on.

"There is nothing expected," was the reply. "But something may come, although I do not think it in the least degree probable. If it does, I will say you are already in possession; no harm shall come to you."

"I must stay for a little while, for fear of the governor coming back, but I will leave before ten o'clock if that will do?"

"That will do," said Mrs. Mortomley.

What a contagion there is in vice!

As vice, or indeed as worse than vice, Williams regarded these mysteries with which Mrs. Mortomley was evidently au courant, and yet there seemed a fascination about it all to the butler.

As such things were to be, why should he not master their details? Although he despised the French, he knew a knowledge of their language sometimes stood a man in good stead, and in like manner if sovereigns were being flung about in this reckless fashion, why should he, through superior address, not have the manipulation of them? His knowledge of mankind taught him half-a-crown would have compassed Mrs. Mortomley's desires as completely as twenty shillings, and Williams sighed over that balance of seventeen shillings and sixpence, as Mr. Swanland had sighed over John Jones' two pounds ten shillings.

"I want you, Williams," said Mrs. Mortomley, when his meditations had assumed the form of regrets, and he followed her into the dining-room.

"You had better let that man have some supper," she said. "I suppose you can manage to do so, and if for a day or two you are able so to arrange matters that no one shall suspect who or what he is, I am certain Lord Darsham will be very much obliged. And I can only say for my own part, I am very much obliged and—" a slight pantomime of offer and protest and final acceptance, and another of Dolly's sovereigns had gone the way which so many sovereigns, that can ill be spared, do go in this prosaic world.

Williams did not give notice next morning to Lord Darsham, and his forbearance was rewarded.

CHAPTER XII.

"She has ordered mourning for the whole household," observed Lord Darsham, "and she has intimated her wish that a milliner should go to Dassell to see the children's dresses are properly made. Now, with every wish—"

"I comprehend, my Lord, and have already countermanded her orders, or, at least, have requested that their execution may be delayed."

Something in the tone of her voice, something in the stress she laid on the words my lord, struck the person she addressed with a sense of uneasiness.

"Good Heavens! Mrs. Mortomley, you don't suppose I grudge Leonora this small expense. You do not think so meanly of me as that, I hope. But, still, with an execution in the house I cannot imagine that Leonora—"

"If Leonora knew how she is situated," Mrs. Mortomley again interrupted, "she would clothe herself in sackcloth; she would have all her coloured dresses dyed black rather than incur one penny of needless expense, and she ought to know, and you ought to tell her."

Which Lord Darsham finally agreed to do, and then left the revelation to Mrs. Mortomley.

"She must be told, and at once," thought Dolly, as she dragged wearily up the staircase, to find Mrs. Werner sitting in her widow's weeds, all alone.

"Lenny," she began, "I want to speak to you very seriously. I think you ought to go back to Dassell without any unnecessary delay."

Mrs. Werner half rose from her seat.

"Are any of the children ill," she asked, "or is it my mother?"

"Your mother is well as far as I know," answered Mrs. Mortomley, "and so are the children; but there are evils almost as hard to bear as illness, and—"

"You know, Dolly, I can bear anything better than suspense," said Mrs. Werner.

"I know nothing of the kind," was the reply. "My own impression is, you or any woman could endure suspense better than bad news, and my news is bad."

"What is it like?"

"It is very like a change of fortune," answered Mrs. Mortomley. "Did it never occur to you, Lenny, that of late you have been living at a tremendous rate?"

"I was aware we spent a considerable sum of money," said Mrs. Werner; "but Mr. Werner wished it; and his business was good, and—"

"My dear," interrupted Dolly, "his business, poor man, was not good. He was forced to keep up an appearance in order to preserve his credit, and he was far from being rich when he died."

"You are not in earnest?" asked Mrs. Werner, an expression of horror coming into her face, for which her friend knew too well how to account; then added, "Oh! Dolly, tell me the worst at once?"

"I do not know either the best or the worst myself yet," was the answer. "Only of one thing I am certain, that you and the children are not left so well off as we might have hoped would be the case."

"That was what Charley came to tell me a little while since," remarked Mrs. Werner.

"Yes, his heart failed him as mine would have done, Leonora, but I felt you ought to know."

"Dolly, do you think this had anything to do with his death?" asked Mrs. Werner, so suddenly that the question taking Dolly unprepared she stood mute, unable to answer.

"You do think so then?" said Mrs. Werner.

"I only think, remember, Leonora. God alone knows."

"Leave me," entreated the miserable woman. "I will try to bear it, but, oh! leave me to bear it alone."

Dolly crept down to the drawing-room, where Lord Darsham anxiously awaited her return.

"Have you told her?" he asked. "Has she decided on her future plans?"

"I have told her as much as I can tell her at present," was the reply. "When she has recovered a little from the shock, she will form her plans, no doubt. Meantime, my Lord, I think I could help you, and Leonora too, if you would tell me your plans with regard to your cousin and her family."

"Before I answer your question, will you answer one of mine? What have I done, Mrs. Mortomley, that your tone and manner have changed towards me so utterly? You are misjudging me in some way. You fancy because Leonora is poor, I shall not be so willing to help her as if she had been left well-dowered. Is it not so?"

"'Conscience makes cowards of us all,'" remarked Dolly, with a bitter little laugh. "It is you who have changed. Poverty and money; these two things are the touchstones of love, esteem, friendship. Have I not seen it? Do I not know it? I was wrong to expect a miracle; but I did hope for better things from you."

"And what have I done to forfeit your good opinion?" he asked. "Could a brother have taken more responsibility upon himself than I have done? I would have paid out that fellow downstairs, but you advised me not to part with money which might be useful to Leonora. Have not I told you I will see to her and the children? Is it not merely to save her annoyance I urge the necessity for her departure from this wretched house? Surely, you are hard to please?"

"I am not at all hard to please, and you know that," she answered. "When first you heard of Mr. Werner's reverses, you were goodness itself; you were as utterly unworldly and disinterested as—well, as my own husband is.

"But you had not then stood face to face with that ruin which overtakes a commercial man. A loss of income; the reduction of a household; having to live frugally, and dress plainly; these things never seem terrible to friends and acquaintances who are not called upon to practise such economy in their own persons. What has tried you is just what tries every one who is privileged to see the process by which men, unable to meet their engagements, are stripped of everything they possess.

"That man in possession horrified you almost as much as he did Williams. Being brought into contact with Mr. Forde disgusted you. Lord Darsham began to wonder with how much of this sort of thing he might become connected, and, though quite willing to do his duty, he could not avoid thinking duty a very unpleasant necessity."

"You are exhaustive, Mrs. Mortomley."

"It is a subject I have studied," she said. "Do you suppose any human being could pass through all this, as I have done, and come out innocent and believing. The bulk of friends I class under two heads:—those who know, and those who do not know what ruin means. The first simply turn their backs on the ruined man altogether; the second ask him to dinner, or to stay with them for a week, a fortnight, or a month."

"I am not going to ask my cousin to dinner, neither do I intend to turn my back on her," he remarked, unable, angry though he was, to avoid smiling at Dolly's sweeping assertions.

"No, but what are you about to do for her; what are you able and willing to do for her? If you mean—supposing she is utterly beggared—to say, I will allow you so much a year certain, say so to her soon. If, on the other hand, you are uncertain as to what you can do in the future, let her think if there be any way in which she can help herself, and assist her to the best of your ability. You would be doing her a greater kindness to leave her to let lodgings or keep a school, than to make her a pensioner on your—kindness shall we say?—for an uncertain income."

Lord Darsham took a turn or two up and down the room, then he said,

"You hit hard, but you hit fair. I will consider what I ought to do, and can do; and then—"

"It will not cost you much," she observed as he paused. "A woman may care for these things," with a gesture she indicated the furniture and appointments of that stately room. "Most women, I suppose, do like pretty and costly surroundings, but if she be a woman like Leonora she can give them all up when she knows it is right she should. You cannot imagine how much we can do with a little when necessary. Do you recollect sending Leonora a hundred pounds last Christmas?"

"I do, and she gave it away, and I was angry with her in consequence."

"She gave it to me," said Dolly boldly, though her face flushed a little as she made the confession. "And do you know what I did with it? I started a business—a colour manufactory—and we are living on the profits of that factory now, and when my dear husband gets strong again, I shall be able to begin and pay that hundred pounds back to Leonora."

"She won't take a penny of it," he exclaimed.

"Yes she will," answered Mrs. Mortomley, "because we understand each other, Leonora and I! Shall I ever forget that Christmas Eve! I had five sovereigns between us and nothing. A husband making nothing, and ill, and obliged to go up each day to see the trustee of his Estate. I was miserable. I was lonely. I was wishing I had been brought up to work of any kind, so that I might earn a few shillings a week, when Leonora came,—Leonora in her silks and furs, with her dear kind face; and she would make me take your cheque, and I declare, when I opened and looked at it, after she drove away, I felt as if it and she had come straight from God."

"Dolly," he said, "had I only known—"

"You might have brought me more," she went on; "but you could never have brought it in the same way. She knew all; she had seen the bailiffs at Homewood; she had seen friend after friend desert us; she had seen insults heaped on our heads; she had seen her own husband turn against mine when misfortunes overtook us; but it made no difference with her, and for that reason I shall stand between Leonora and trouble so long as I am able."

It was inconsequent language; but Lord Darsham knew well enough what she meant by it. He had felt that if being mixed up with business and Mr. Werner's affairs, and Mrs. Werner's adversity, included executions for debt, and interviews with such men as Mr. Forde, and taking the sole charge of his cousin and her children for life, then indeed he had become involved in an affair much more disagreeable and of considerably greater magnitude than could prove pleasant, and he had felt compassion for himself at being placed in such a situation.

But Dolly, the Dolly he remembered when she was but a tiny bit of a child—in the days in which his cousin Leonora called her Sunbeam—had put the matter in its true light before him.

If he was going to do anything for his cousin, he ought to do it efficiently. Dolly, as he himself said, hit hard; but she did hit fairly. As she put it, he was free to do or he was free to leave undone; but he was not free to allow Leonora to feel his kindness a burden, her position insecure.

No, Dolly was right; the matter ought to be put on a proper footing. It would never do for him to pay this, that, and the other, and in his heart feel Mrs. Werner, whom he once wished to marry, was spending too much money. Even in that matter of dress, Dolly's common sense had stepped in to the rescue.

"Mrs. Mortomley," he said at length, "will you go with Leonora to Dassell, and when I have arranged affairs here so far as they are capable of arrangement, I can follow you and we shall be able together to decide on our future plans?"

"I should not like to go," Dolly answered; "but if she and you wish it I will go."

As it proved, however, nothing on earth was further from Leonora's desires.

"I cannot return to Dassell yet," she said to her friend. "Mamma's questions would kill me. Dolly, will you take me home with you, to-morrow?"

"Aye, that I will, darling," answered the brave little woman, utterly regardless of ways and means in her anxiety to pleasure that distracted heart.

"Stay with me for a little while, please," whispered Mrs. Werner. She was afraid, now she had once looked upon the face of her trouble, of being left to contemplate it through the darksome hours of the summer night.

"I am going to sleep on the sofa, and if you want me at any hour or minute you have but to say 'Dolly.'"

Next morning a curious discovery was made. Mrs. Werner's jewellery, which she never took with her to Dassell, had all disappeared.

This led to an investigation of the contents of the plate closet, which seemed extremely short of silver, but this Williams explained by stating that when the family went to Brighton the previous winter, his master had for greater security removed the bulk of the plate to his bankers.

These matters were not mentioned to Mrs. Werner, but they filled Lord Darsham with a terrible uneasiness.

He felt thankful that his cousin was leaving that huge town house which lawyers and auctioneers, and bankruptcy messengers, were soon to fill with their pervading presence.

"May I come and see you, Mrs. Mortomley?" he asked, as he bade her good-bye at the Great Eastern terminus.

"Certainly," she answered. "Our cottage is a small one, but, as the Americans say, it opens into all out of doors."

He retained her hand for a moment, looked earnestly in her face as she said this, then the train was off, and, she smiling at him, bowed and kissed her finger in acknowledgment of his uplifted hat.

They were gone, and he walked slowly out of the station full of a fancy her words had conjured up.

CHAPTER XIII.

With everything beautiful decking the earth in honour of her advent, spring came smiling that year across the fair English landscape. Sunshine and blue sky everywhere overhead; underfoot springing grass and luxuriant wheat and flowers, and bud and leaf; and at the first, and when the first spring bird's twitter announced that the loveliest season of all the English year was close at hand, Dolly's spirits rose like the heart of a giant refreshed to give the sweet visitor greeting.

She had been ailing and languid all through the tedious winter, but at sight of the sunshine, at sound of the songs of birds, somewhat of her former brightness returned.

"I know now," she said, "how glad that poor dove must have been to get out of the ark. I never used to be tired of winter, but latterly the winters have seemed so long and cold and dreary."

"And yet we have kept up glorious fires this winter," remarked Mortomley, to whom health and comparative youth seemed to have been restored as by a miracle.

"Yes," agreed his wife, "what should we have done without the great logs of woodand you—aunt?" and she held out a grateful hand to Miss Gerace, who never intended to go back to Dassell any more, who had given up her house, her maid, her furniture to 'the ladies,' as they were styled in that far-away region, Mesdames Trebasson and Werner; who never intended to leave Dolly again, and who had with tears in her eyes entreated her niece's forgiveness because she had, thinking Mrs. Mortomley could never come to want, sunk the principal of her money in an annuity.

"You dear old thing," said Dolly trying to laugh away her own tears, "when you are lost to me and mine, we shall not cry the less because you could not leave us enough to buy mourning," and it was then Miss Gerace and Dolly agreed they were not to part company again.

In good truth, how Dolly would have got through that winter without her aunt's presence and her aunt's money she did not know.

Life had been a hard enough struggle when she was strong to battle, but not long after Mrs. Werner left the little cottage, Dolly felt a weakness come upon her against which she was impotent to struggle, which made it easy to persuade her to take her morning cup of tea in bed, and do little save sit near the grateful warmth of that pleasant wood-fire through the day.

The doctor came; a pleasant chatty country doctor, who was accustomed to patients who liked to dwell on their ailments, and who, though Mrs. Mortomley puzzled him, never imagined she could be so stupid as to tell him fibs.

According to all known rules Dolly ought to have had one or two very sufficient pains, one or two very decided symptoms, but Dolly had no pains and no symptoms. She was only tired she declared, exhausted mentally and bodily if he preferred that form of expression, and she should be well in the spring.

That was all any one could make out of Mrs. Mortomley, and when the spring came it seemed to justify her prediction.

With the bright weather Dolly revived. She sat in the sunshine, she donned her brightest apparel, she ate with a relish the simple country fare, and she requested the kindly rector to say one day from the reading-desk that Dollabella Mortomley desired to return thanks for "mercies vouchsafed."

"For what mercies, my dear?" asked the good rector, who could not look at her wistful, eager face quite unmoved.

"God has vouchsafed me another spring," she answered; "one of almost unalloyed happiness."

And so the sunshine of old returned and stayed with her to the end.

With the spring came Mrs. Werner. Her friend had requested her visit long before; but she delayed complying with that request till an almost imperative message brought her South.

Then Dolly gave her that packet, the secret of which she had kept so faithfully, and when Mrs. Werner opened it, she found notes to the amount of two thousand pounds and a letter, her dead husband's confession and fare-well. "I cannot retain this money," said Mrs. Werner.

"Do so for a week and then we will talk about it," Mrs. Mortomley answered, and for a week the widow maintained silence, walking alone through those Hertfordshire woods, and for the first time keeping her vigil with the dead.

"Do not send that money to lawyer, trustee, or creditor, Lenny," said Mrs. Mortomley when they came to talk the matter over. "Remember your marriage vows and obey your husband. He risked much to save that for you; do not frustrate his intentions. When the expenses come out of that, it would be a penny in the pound to the creditors; and if you could send it direct to the creditors, they would not thank you for it. Poor Lang—oh how sorry I am Archie and Lang could not get on together, for he was one in a thousand—said to me once,

"'Look here, ma'am, creditors are this sort of folks. If you had paid them nineteen and eleven pence in the pound, and stripped yourself of everything to pay them that, and they saw your clean shirt lying on the bed ready for you to put on, they would want the shirt on the bed to pay the odd penny.' Keep that two thousand pounds, my dear. I, who have been through it all, tell you any human being who allows sentiment to influence business pays for his folly with his life."

"Dolly!"

"I mean what I say, Lenny; but you need not employ a crier to circulate the news. It will not be yet; but it must be some time. Had we laid aside two thousand pounds, I might have lived to be as old as your friend the Countess of Desmond."

To Mrs. Werner the way in which those who were with Dolly continually, refused to believe in anything very serious being the matter with her, seemed at first incredible, but after a time she too found the fact of danger hard to realise. Death and Dolly appeared as far removed from each other as light and darkness, and yet she was going, surely, if slowly out of the day into the night.

"I am thankful to see her so much better," remarked Miss Gerace, in answer to some observation of Mrs. Werner's. "She did look shockingly ill through the winter. I was quite uneasy about her, but now she has recovered her spirits and her appetite, and is getting quite a colour in her cheeks."

Mrs. Werner remained silent for a moment, then with an effort she said, "Dear Miss Gerace, can not you see what that colour is—don't you know Dolly paints?"

If she had declared Dolly to be a pickpocket, Miss Gerace could not have been more shocked. Forthwith she took her niece to task about this iniquity, which Mrs. Mortomley did not deny, though she tried to laugh off the accusation.

"What is the harm of sometimes painting the lily?" she observed. "If Leonora had either been as stupid or as wise as she ought to have been, I should eventually have worked up that colour to one of robust health, but as you all appear to object to my looking beautiful, I think I shall take out my frizettes, let down my hair, wear a dressing-wrapper all day long, and adopt the appearance and manners of an untidy ghost."

"My dear, you should not talk in that light way," expostulated Miss Gerace; "though you may not know it, illness is a very serious thing."

Not know it! There was a little quiver about Dolly's mouth which might have told a tale to the woman who had lived so long, if her understanding of her niece's nature had been as thorough as that possessed by Mrs. Werner.

Not know it! Had she lain awake through the long, long winter nights, and the scarcely less dreary spring mornings, reconciling herself to the idea of that long, lonely journey, thinking thoughts that lay between herself and her God, without coming to a full comprehension of the fact that not even sorrow is more solemn and awful than mortal sickness.

She knew all about it.

"But I never could bear the sight of sad faces," she said to Mrs. Werner, "and if you frighten aunt and make Archie think there is something very much amiss with me, you will render all our lives miserable."

Mrs. Werner sighed. It was against her preconceived ideas that a woman should smile and laugh and be still the very sunshine of her home all the time a fatal disease was working its will upon her, and yet she felt in her heart Dolly's was the soundest philosophy, if only she could be induced to take care of herself to lengthen out the time before——

No, she could not even mentally finish the sentence. If Dolly would not make an effort to save her own life, some one should fight against death in her behalf.

"It is wrong of you," she said, "knowing how precious you are to us all; you should use every effort to get well again. You ought to have first-rate advice. You ought to have change of air. You ought to have everything nourishing and tempting in the way of food. I shall take charge of you myself now. You belong to me as much as to your husband. I am sure no man ever loved a woman more than I have loved you."

"Come here, Lenny," was the answer. "Come close beside me, dear—here in the sunshine, and let us settle all this at once, never to speak of it again. For myself, for my own very individual self's sake," she went on, taking Mrs. Werner's hand in hers, and stroking it absently, "I am not certain that if I could, I should care to live, unless, indeed, I were able to find some waters of Lethe in which I might plunge and forget all the misery, all the humiliation of the past. There are some people who cannot forget. I am one of them. There are some who cannot remember and be quite happy; that is my case. There are some who think life not much worth having unless they can be very happy in it; I fear I hold some such heretical doctrine."

She stopped and kissed Mrs. Werner, smiling all the time the bright smile of old.

"So much for myself," she said, "but for Archie's sake, for Lenore's, for yours, not least for the sake of my poor aunt who has grown so to love me, just when it would have been well for her to have done nothing of the kind, I would stay if I could—I would spend money and time and thought, to get strong again.

"I have consulted doctors, I have told great physicians every symptom of my complaint, though I do not choose to be quite frank with a medical man, who, knowing Archie, might make the poor fellow wretched before there is any necessity for him to be told the truth.

"I have followed every scrap of advice so far as I possibly could, I have taken care of myself, and the result is I am here still; and it may be, if affairs continue to go well with us, that I may remain for a long time yet, as time counts in such cases. And now, Lenny, do not let us speak of this ever again."

"But cannot you get away from this place?" asked Mrs. Werner.

"I am as well here as I should be anywhere else," was the reply; "and it would be folly to move to a fresh neighbourhood just when the works are really beginning to return a good income. Besides, though the house is small, I love it; and those woods are, to my mind, the very realization of peace."

"How did it happen Lang left you?"

"I can scarcely tell you, such a variety of reasons went to make up the sum total of his discontent. Of course, till Archie took the reins, he had everything almost his own way; he bought and he sold and he kept the books and he employed whom he liked, and finally he lost his head as all people of his class do. I dare say you never had a cook able to grill a chop, who did not fancy you never could get on without her. Well, of course, Archie found this unpleasant. Lang got discontented and jealous and very troublesome, and made things uncomfortable for himself and every one else.

"At last matters came to a crisis about a clerk who had such good testimonials, we thought he would prove a treasure. We shortly found he was anything rather than a treasure however, and Archie would have got rid of him at once if Lang had not come up one evening and given us the choice of parting with him or Roberts—that was the clerk's name.

"He said, he Lang, need not remain long out of a situation; that Hart, Mayfield, and Company had offered him a good salary, and that if he was not put on some different footing with us, he would go to those able to appreciate his services.

"So Archie answered he had better go to them, and he went and we were all very sorry, Lang included,—he repented, and would have stayed at the last, but I don't see how Archie could have kept him."

"Neither do I," said Mrs. Werner; and then she asked, "Now that Mr. Mortomley is making money, is he not afraid of Mr. Swanland demanding a share of the profits?"

Dolly laughed. "Everything is in the name of Miss Gerace, and you cannot think how pleased the old darling is when we joke about her colour-works and ask how orders are coming in for her new blue and her famous yellow. She is learning to write a plain commercial hand so as to take the whole of the correspondence. I cannot tell you the comfort she is to me. I do not know what Archie and I and the child would have done without her all through the dull, dark winter days."

Mrs. Werner did not answer; she was wondering at that moment how Archie and Miss Gerace and the child would do without Dolly through the days of the sorrowful summers and winters yet to come.

CHAPTER XIV.

She had wandered slowly through the woods to a spot where, the trees ceasing to impede the view, she could see far away over the luxuriant champaign through which the Lea wound its devious way, glittering in the distance like a thread of silver.

There she sat down to rest on a felled tree, and the beauty of the landscape stole into her heart, and with it a feeling of infinite peace. For the moment life and its cares, past troubles, the fear of sorrow coming to those dear to her in the future, dropped from off her spirit; as for a few minutes a heavy burden, that must be taken up again, may be cast aside. She felt better than she had done for months previously, and at once her buoyant nature grasped at the hope that perhaps her disease was stayed, that she might live a few years longer to see her husband again free, without that shadow of bankruptcy and unpaid debt pursuing him.

His discharge was the one earthly good Dolly still desired with an exceeding longing; and under that bright clear sky, with that sweet peaceful country stretching out before her eyes, even so wild a dream as freedom for the man she loved and pitied with a love and pity exceeding that of a wife seemed not incapable of fulfilment.

Along the path which, cutting first across the fields and then through the wood, led straight as a crow's flight from the nearest railway station to the high-road, which their little cottage overlooked, she saw a man advancing towards the spot she occupied.

Not a young man, not a labouring man, not any person resident in the neighbourhood, but a stranger, evidently, for he often paused and looked around, as if doubtful of being in the right way, and when he had got a little distance into the wood he stopped and hesitated, and then retracing his steps, took off his hat, and asked Dolly if she could kindly direct him to

"Mortomley's Colour Works?"

She gave him the information, and then added,

"If you want to see Mr. Mortomley, he is not at home to-day."

"That is very unfortunate," remarked the stranger.

"Is your business with him very important?" she asked, a fear born of the experiences of that time she could never recall without a shudder prompting the question, "I am Mrs. Mortomley," she explained with a nervous laugh and a vivid blush. "Perhaps you could tell me what it is you want; and that might save you trouble and spare him."

He did not quite understand what she meant by her last expression. How could he tell that now, as in that far away time when Mortomley had been ruined, her first thought, her sole desire was to spare him, the man over whom a sorrow impended, the coming of which she could not retard?

"You are very kind," said the gentleman courteously; "but I could not think of troubling you about the matter. I must see Mr. Mortomley, however, and if you name a time when he is likely to be at home, I will call."

She felt certain, now, that something dreadful was about to happen.

"I wish," she said, rising; "I do wish you would give me some idea of the nature of your business. I am not very strong, and I cannot bear anxiety as I used to be able to do; and if you will not tell me why you want to see my husband, I shall be imagining all sorts of evil. I beg your pardon for speaking so vehemently," she added, seeing a look of amazement in the stranger's face; "but you do not know what we have gone through."

Looking at her more closely he could form some idea.

"Pray sit down," he entreated. "I am so sorry to have alarmed you. Why you are trembling as if you thought I meant to do your husband some great injury, and I only want to speak to him about a colour I understand he manufactures!"

"What—his new blue?" asked Dolly, brightening up in a moment.

"No; his new yellow," was the reply.

It would have been impossible for any one to avoid being amused at the sudden change in Mrs. Mortomley's expression, and almost in spite of himself the stranger smiled as he answered.

Dolly's face reflected that smile, and as he saw the sunshine in her eyes uplifted to his, the stranger, though he had come on no friendly errand to Mortomley, felt himself drawn by an irresistible attraction, to be friends with Mortomley's wife.

"Won't you be seated?" she asked. If he had been young and handsome as he was old and plain, Dolly would, without thought of evil, have issued a precisely similar invitation, and the stranger smiled again as he availed himself of it. And seeing that, Dolly smiled once more while she asked him what he wanted to say to her husband about the new yellow.

"I wanted to know, in the first instance, if he really manufactured it," was the reply.

"Oh! yes; quantities," she answered. "He could sell fifty times as much if he had a larger place to make it in. Do you want some?"

"No," said the stranger; "I do not."

Now this puzzled Mrs. Mortomley, and so she tried back.

"What did you want to know in the second instance?" she asked.

"Really, Mrs. Mortomley," he was beginning, when she interrupted him.

"It is of no use your trying to deceive me; you have got something unpleasant to say to my husband—what is it?"

"Well, the fact is, he has no right to be making that yellow."

"He has every right," she retorted, "for he invented it; and if you come from Mr. Swanland, you can tell him that I say Mr. Mortomley will manufacture any colour he pleases."

It was a privilege accorded to few people, but the new-comer certainly had the benefit of seeing Dolly in all the moods of which her nature was capable in a single interview.

"I do not come from Mr. Swanland," was the reply; "indeed, I do not know who Mr. Swanland is. That is my name," and he handed her his card; "and the reason why I say Mr. Mortomley has no right to make that yellow is because he sold his secret to me."

Dolly looked at the speaker as a tigress might have done had he touched her cub. She got first red with passion, and then that red turned to a white heat, and her heart seemed to stand still with rage, then suddenly it gave a great bound of relief, and she said to that elderly gentleman quite solemnly, and yet with a certain cheerful assurance in her tone,—

"You are mad!"

"Indeed I am not," was the reply. "I hold a receipt for the money I paid for your husband's secret, and I think I have just cause for complaint when I find the formulæ given to me imperfect, and Mr. Mortomley sending a colour into the market which according to equity is mine exclusively."

"Show me the receipt you speak of," she said. "There is some great mistake—you are labouring under some gross delusion."

For answer he opened his pocket-book and handed her a paper, which proved to be a receipt for two hundred and fifty pounds paid by Charles Douglas, Esquire, for the formulæ of a new yellow.

This document was signed

"For Archibald Mortomley,
"R. Halling."

and in a moment Dolly understood what had been done.

"The viper!" she said; "and he knew we were beggars when he robbed us of the money. And we had sheltered him and his sister and—"

"For mercy's sake calm yourself, Mrs. Mortomley," entreated Mr. Douglas, as she broke into a perfect agony of grief. "I would not for all the value of the money, I would not even for the worth of the colour, have so distressed you. I will destroy the receipt and never mention the affair again if you will only promise not to fret yourself about the matter."

"You will not destroy that receipt," she said, rising. "You shall come home with me and hear how my husband has been cheated, just as you have been cheated."

In utter silence they walked together through the wood to the little cottage which was Mortomley's home, at sight of which Mr. Douglas experienced an amazement impossible to describe.

On the threshold Mr. Mortomley, who had returned unexpectedly, met his wife and her companion.

"Dolly," he said, "where have you been? what is the matter?"

"This gentleman, Mr. Douglas, will tell you," she answered. "He wants to speak to you about the new yellow."

"Yes, I came to have a talk with you on that subject, and unfortunately I met with Mrs. Mortomley on my way here; unfortunately for her, I mean, for I am afraid I have, most unintentionally, caused her great distress. I dare say you know my name as a colour manufacturer, Mr. Mortomley. I have long known yours, and I am very happy to make your acquaintance."

And so saying he held out his hand, and thus this man—good, generous, and rich—this man so wealthy that he could at the time of Mortomley's greatest prosperity have bought up everything he owned in the world, and scarcely have missed the amount, came unexpectedly into the lives of Dolly and her husband.

He had meant to curse, and behold he remained to bless altogether.

From the moment his eyes fell on Mortomley, he "took to him," as the homely phrase expresses that fancy at first sight some men experience for each other, and some women too; and when from Dolly, at a subsequent period, he heard the particulars of that story I have tried in these pages to tell, his heart sank when he contrasted all he might and would have done for husband and wife with all he might ever do now, when it was too late to do much for one of them, at all events.

Fain would Mortomley with his wide charity, which, as Dolly declared, amounted in some cases to weakness, have excused and softened Rupert's perfidy; but Mr. Douglas said, and truly, that the offence was one which admitted of no gentle shading—which was beyond excuse, "though," he added with a kindly smile at Mortomley's troubled face, "I see, not beyond your powers of forgiveness."

"I think forgiveness of injuries an entire mistake," said Dolly from the depths of her arm-chair.

"If so it is a divine one," remarked Mr. Douglas. And then Mrs. Mortomley understood their visitor, who by that time had become their guest,—for all this conversation took place after dinner—and the sister, of whom he had spoken more than once, were what she called, and often herself wished to be, "good."

Nevertheless, she said subsequently to her husband, "I shall tell Rupert what I think of his conduct the very first time I see him. You may forgive if you like, but I will reprove; it only encourages people to be wicked to be tender with their faults, and I do not mean to be tender with him."

But when the time came she was not very hard; she said to him as they stood at the gate of the cottage together, the last time he ever saw her alive, "Rupert, I want you to know we are not ignorant of how, when we were so poor, you sold Archie's secret to Mr. Douglas. Now, there are some things I can understand; I can under pressure imagine Lazarus robbing Dives, and a man in extremity forging and telling falsehoods to save his credit, but I cannot understand the nature of the person who shall steal twopence-halfpenny from the pocket of a blind old widow, or who, when the man who befriended him is sick and incompetent, takes that opportunity to rob him of the only possession left. You need not try to defend yourself, Rupert, because your conduct is indefensible."

"I shall not try," he said huskily; "I was wrong."

"That is enough; do not vex yourself about the matter now," she answered, "for, Rupert, unintentionally when you took Archie's ewe lamb, you gave him that which will turn eventually into a great flock of sheep."

CHAPTER XV.

Mr. Douglas was one of those men who feel they cannot stand still and let the world get in advance of them, even though their pockets do chance to be stuffed with gold, and almost at the first glance, certainly after half an hour's conversation, he knew Mortomley was that other business half which himself required and for which he had been vainly seeking through years among all sorts and conditions of men.

As has been said in an early chapter of this story, Mortomley's genius was essentially imaginative.

"Give him a laboratory and ease of mind, and there is scarcely a difficulty in our trade he could not overcome," thought Mr. Douglas. "If he can make a purely vegetable green, as he says he can, and I believe he says only what is literally true, he ought to make his fortune, and I should feel very much inclined to help him to do it." But when, subsequently, he broached this idea, Mortomley shook his head.

"I can never make a fortune unless I am able to procure my discharge, and if I live to be as old as Methuselah I shall never obtain that."

It was on this occasion that he gave Mr. Douglas a slight sketch of his experiences of liquidation. All the deeper tints, all the darker shadows, all the lurid colouring, Dolly added at a later period in the garden at Homewood, a place, Mr. Douglas said, he particularly wished to see.

Unknown to Mortomley, his wife and his new friend travelled from a little country station, then newly set up among the green Hertfordshire fields, to Stratford, which Mrs. Mortomley described in a brief sentence as the "dirtiest place on earth," then they changed carriages for Leytonstone, whence they drove along the road Dolly remembered so well to Homewood.

The hinges of the front gate were broken, and they entered the grounds without let or hindrance. Everything had been permitted to go to wreck; the red-thorn-trees had been cut down for fuel, the rare shrubs were hacked and hewn to pieces, the great evergreens were torn about or dead, the clematis and the honeysuckle trailed along the ground over part of the verandah, which had been dragged down by the boys climbing over it; the laurel walk was almost completely destroyed, and upon the lawn, where beds filled with flowers made the summer ever beautiful, a stray horse grazed peacefully.

Within, the same tale of ruin was to be read as they had found written outside. The children who squinted and the mother that bore them still were in residence, and there was not a paper on the walls, not an inch of paint, upon which defacing fingers had omitted to leave a mark.

The kitchen-garden was a mass of weeds and the drive knee deep in grass. Where those children ought to have walked, they had refrained from treading, but through the shrubberies they had made a path, marking their route, Indian fashion, on the trees.

In the remembered summer-house, where so many a pleasant group had in the old times collected, Dolly sat down to await the return of their new friend.

He wanted to look at the "works" now bare of plant, at the great yards once filled with casks and carboys, alive with the stir of workmen and the clamour of trade,—all silent now, silent as the grave. At the time of Mortomley's commercial death came the sleek undertaker from Salisbury House, and took away all they could bury of the man and his surroundings.

Empty were the stalls of Homewood, bare of oats the mangers, falling to decay the pigeon-houses, tenantless the byres and styes, denuded the barns, but in fancy Mr. Douglas filled them all again with plenty and to spare. Yes, he would buy the lease of Homewood, and once again it should blossom as the rose.

He opened his project cautiously to Mrs. Mortomley. The prospect of returning to the beloved home might, he thought, prove too much for her if the idea were broached without due preparation, so he tried, sitting in the summer-house to lead up to it, but found his auditor unsympathetic.

"She had loved Homewood dearly."

"Did she not love it now?"

"Yes, as one loves the dead."

"Should not she like to live there once more?"

"No; she could never forget, never while life lasted, what she had suffered there."

And then she told her tale—told it looking with dry eyes over the desolate wilderness which had once been so fair a home—told it all, simply and without colouring, as a Frenchman might—supposing a Frenchman capable of telling an unvarnished narrative—relate how the Uhlans entered his modest habitation, and, not without insult, stripped it bare.

"But do not you think your husband would like to come back here?" he inquired after a long pause.

"Back here?" she repeated, "I think I understand now your intention; but do not try to carry it out; Archie would never be happy here without me."

"Is your objection to Homewood, then, so rooted?" he inquired, with a disappointed smile.

For answer she only turned away her head, and he repeated his question.

Then she said, "I should not like my poor husband to arrange his future with any reference to me."

She had been so bright, so cheerful, so eager about Mortomley's prosperity, so reticent concerning her own ailments, that Mr. Douglas had learned to think he must have erred in imagining that when first he looked in her face he looked in the face of a woman for whom the fiat had gone forth, but now, by her forced silence, by the unshed tears in her voice when she finally answered, he understood.

He knew that she had faced her danger, and that to the last she was keeping a bold front to the enemy, for the sake of another; aye! ever and always, Dolly was faithful to that trust.

Without another word of explanation they left Homewood.

Tenderly, as she passed one special spot, Dolly gathered a sprig of myrtle, and kissing it, would have placed it in her purse, but, thinking twice about the matter, she held it in her hand till they were near the front gate, when she cast it from her.

Strong to the last, brave as tender, was it any marvel this man who had never called any woman wife, never held a child of his own to his heart, felt that had Mrs. Mortomley been his wife or his daughter, he could sooner have parted with life than with her.

"There is only one thing you can do for me," she observed as she lay back in the railway carriage on their way home. "Get my husband's discharge and that will be worth more than gold and silver to me."

"I will do my best, my dear," he answered; "but I fear the difficulties are almost insurmountable."

In truth he had been interesting himself greatly about this very matter, and he did not see, unless a useless expense were incurred, how the desire of Dolly's heart was to be compassed.

That fatal clause rendering the concurrence of the whole of the committee necessary had been paraded ostentatiously before his face by Mr. Swanland.

True, Mr. Kleinwort was not in England or likely to return to it, and Mr. Forde had nothing now to do with the General Chemical Company, Limited, which had indeed itself ceased to exist, having been purchased by Hewitt and Date for a sum which paid the original shareholders about a sovereign in the twenty-five pound share.

The directors had made a gallant fight in order to continue the business, but their courage proved useless. The next morning after that night when Lord Darsham told Williams to show Mr. Forde the door, the manager had risen with the firm intention of handing in his resignation that forenoon, but on the way to St. Vedast Wharf he met Mr. Gibbons.

"Bad business that about Werner," said that gentleman.

"It's a bad business for me," answered Mr. Forde lugubriously; "I shall have to resign to-day, and what is to become of me and those poor creatures at home God alone knows."

"Nonsense!" retorted Mr. Gibbons; "why should you resign unless you have some consideration given you for doing so? Put a bold front on the matter, and say you did the best for the directors and the shareholders, and you are ready to answer any questions that may be put. They will give you a cool two hundred to walk out. That is what I should do if I were in your place."

And that was precisely what Mr. Forde did; the result being that he got not only two hundred but three hundred pounds given out of the directors' own pockets, if he would resign at once and follow his friend Kleinwort to South America.

And so that chapter in City history ended, with only this addendum, Mr. Forde never went to South America, though the directors said and believed he did.

With the three hundred pounds he travelled as far as Liverpool, where he set up in business with his correspondent Tom, and where people hear very little indeed about his wife and children, who live in an extremely small house situate at Everton.

Sic transit gloria mundi, the ex-manager might well exclaim, did he understand the meaning of that phrase, while pacing the pavement of those dreary streets to and from his humble habitation, when he contrasts the actual present with the once possible future himself had conceived.

Mr. Forde's departure from London caused another absentee; and as the opposition colour maker had by this time gone into liquidation, and would have cheerfully given his vote for Mortomley's immediate discharge had any one offered him five pounds, Mr. Swanland might certainly have helped the bankrupt to freedom had he chosen to do so. But Mr. Swanland did not choose to do so, and Mr. Douglas was afraid to tell Dolly this.

"It will come in time," she said calmly, "or if it never does, some other way will open for my husband."

"Yes," remarked her new friend, "I can promise that, but you must promise in return to go down to my little place in Devonshire, and try to get well again. Smiles says, change of air may do wonders for you."

Smiles was an eminent doctor, the kind old man had feed liberally to come to Wood Cottage and pass his opinion upon Mrs. Mortomley's state, and Mr. Smiles had said pleasant things, and deceived every one, save Dolly, as to her real condition.

Nevertheless, Dolly imagining the evil hour might be deferred, promised and fulfilled. She went into Devonshire, and with all her might tried to get well again.

The "little place" to which Mr. Douglas referred so carelessly, was as sweet a cottage ornèe as eye ever rested on; and to say that Dolly revelled in the place and the peace and the scenery, is scarcely to convey an idea of the amount of happiness she contrived to extract for herself out of sea, and land, and sky.

There was but one cloud hovering over her, one worldly affair perplexing her, but that affair she meant to bequeath to Leonora Werner. Through Lord Darsham's influence and that of Mr. Douglas combined, she knew they would, with the facts she had jotted down, satisfy a second meeting of creditors that if Mortomley's estate in liquidation yielded nothing in the pound, no blame could be attached to Mortomley or Mortomley's wife; and that consequently, according even to the wording of that iniquitous Act of 1869, the bankrupt was entitled to his discharge.

Between herself and her husband there lay no secret. She had told him. One quiet Sunday evening she said simply, "It is best you should know, dear." Her own hand dealt the inevitable blow. It had to be given, and with the subtle sympathy of old she comprehended that if dealt by her, he would feel the keen agony of the stroke less at the time, less in the dreary hereafter.

"I shall stay as long as I can, Archie," she added; that was all the hope she was able to give him, and she gave it. She loved sitting on the beach alone; that is, as regarded her own friends and family, for she liked to talk with children and grown-up people who, unknowing of her danger and attracted merely by her delicate appearance, made acquaintance readily with the "sick lady."

Dolly liked to say she was better, and see no sad wistful look follow her answer.

Amongst the few visitors to that remote place was a lady with whom Mrs. Mortomley delighted each day to exchange a few words. She was old and prim, and fond of religious conversation, and a trifle didactic; but Dolly felt she was true, and Dolly had always liked people who were genuine.

Perhaps that was the reason she was so deeply affected when Lang came all the way from London to see her and say "Good-bye." He was to live in the Hertfordshire cottage and work the colour manufactory for his own benefit, and his old master had given him a few specialities, and he would have been happy but for Mrs. Mortomley's illness and the recollection of the gross perfidy of Harte and Mayfield, who had not merely sent one of their own clerks to take service with Mortomley to discover his secrets, but seduced him (Lang) away with offers of higher wages, and then turned him adrift the moment their purpose was served.

"But, thank God!" said Lang fervently, "they never could make the yellow—that secret is dark enough still. I shall always believe it was some blackguard from their place frightened you that morning. I beg pardon, you were not frightened, though any other lady would have been."

And then they had much more talk, which I have not space to repeat, even if I thought it could prove interesting, and she sent the man away with her photograph carefully placed in a new pocket-book, in anticipation of becoming his own employer.

"Hang it up in some place for the children to see," said Dolly; and it does hang up now, duly framed and glazed, where not merely the children, but all visitors can behold the likeness of Mortomley's faithful wife, which is a digression from the elderly lady with white sausage-like curls, who happened to be Mrs. Asherill.

One day Dolly was sitting on the beach as usual, when she beheld her nameless friend walking towards her arm-in-arm with Mr. Asherill.

Then Dolly, instinctively guessing the lady with whom she had passed a few pleasant half hours was the wife of that detested man, kept her eyes so fastened on the book lying in her lap that Mr. Asherill had a chance of passing by in silence, of which chance he availed himself.

Not the next morning, which was Sunday, but the next but one, Mrs. Asherill called at the cottage and asked to see Mrs. Mortomley, whom she found sitting in an easy-chair near the window.

"I was not well enough to go to the beach to-day," said Dolly, holding out her hand. "How good of you to come here!"

"I could not rest without coming," was the reply. "It seems dreadful that two people like you and my husband should so misunderstand each other, as I am afraid is the case."

"Do we misunderstand each other?" asked Mrs. Mortomley. "Sit down, Mrs. Asherill, and imagine I am little Peterkin, and tell me 'what they killed each other for.'"

"I do not know exactly what you mean, my dear," remarked the elder woman, "but I have felt miserable ever since Saturday. My husband spoke about you bitterly as I have never heard him speak about any one before, and told me to walk in some other direction so that I might not have to speak to you again."

"And what did you tell him?" asked Dolly cheerfully.

"Oh! I made no reply. I meant to call and ask you when and why you had quarrelled, as I should so much like you and my dear, good, kind husband to be friends."

"Come," thought Dolly, "the man has one good point, he is kind to a woman neither young nor handsome; but perhaps she has money."

Which conjecture was true; but, on the other hand, he had been kind and tender to a woman without a sixpence—always ailing, always complaining, to whom he gave the best cup of tea—in those days of bitter griping poverty mentioned far, far back in this story.

"Till Saturday I did not know who you were," said Mrs. Mortomley, after a pause, "and I suppose you did not know who I was. In fact, neither of us was aware we ought to have waged war when we met, instead of sitting peacefully together talking on all sorts of topics. Now we have found out that you are you and that I am I. What are we to do? I am afraid we cannot remain good friends."

"But my husband could not avert your misfortunes. He told me distinctly he refused to undertake the management of Mr. Mortomley's affairs, and that it was quite against his wish Mr. Swanland meddled in the matter."

Dolly sighed wearily.

"I am afraid Mr. Asherill was right," she said, "and that you had better not have come here to-day. I do not wish to speak hardly of any man now, least of all hardly of any man to his wife, but still, I cannot help saying I think we have bitter cause to hate the very names of Asherill and Swanland."

"That I am sure you have not," answered Mrs. Asherill—"at least, not that of my husband. I must tell you something, just to show how utterly you have misjudged him. Do you remember a particularly wet Saturday in September, 18—?"

"Perfectly," said Mrs. Mortomley. "I shall never forget it."

"Nor I, for that day I heard of the death of an old and very dear friend—about the last friend left—whom I had known since girlhood. That evening Mr. Asherill returned home much later than usual, and very much depressed. After dinner he explained to me that he was much concerned about Mr. Mortomley, whose affairs had fallen into embarrassment, and he proposed that we should send fifty pounds of poor Rosa's legacy as an anonymous present to his wife. Now, my dear, no doubt you never guessed from whom that little offering came?"

"I certainly never did, and for a sufficient reason," was the reply, "It never reached me."

"Ah! you forget," said Mrs. Asherill; "no doubt you had enough on your mind at that time to cause you to forget even more important matters than our poor gift—for it was mine as well as his; but I can recall the circumstance to your recollection; you will remember all about it, when I say you acknowledged the amount, with grateful thanks, in the 'Daily News.'"

"I never did," persisted Dolly; "such an occurrence could not have slipped my memory. I never received that money—never acknowledged having received it. I do recollect—" she was proceeding, when she stopped suddenly.

In a moment she understood the position, but she was not mean enough to take advantage of the opportunity thus presented. She could not tell Mrs. Asherill the true version of the affair; she could not ring the bell and bid Esther bring her dressing-case, and produce from the place where it had lain so long, John Jones's letter enclosing two pounds ten.

"There has been some great mistake about this matter, Mrs. Asherill," she said after a pause. "I never received that fifty pounds; and I should like to have an opportunity of speaking to Mr. Asherill on the subject. Ask him to call here next Saturday. Tell him I shall take it as a great kindness if he will favour me with a few minutes' conversation. I have no doubt," added Dolly a little hypocritically, for she wanted to send poor Mrs. Asherill away happy, "we shall be able to arrive at some understanding." And she stretched out her hand, which Mrs. Asherill took and pressed; then, moved by some impulse she could scarcely have defined, she stooped down and touched the lips of Mortomley's wife, murmuring,