"Well, ma'am, I don't see how that can well be, if Mr. Rupert is to get the information we want and use it against us," Lang replied.

"He shall not," was the reply. "He may have caught a hint or two, but he shall catch no more. If he and Mr. Brett go into partnership, it shall not be with Mr. Mortomley's inventions."

"Are you sure, ma'am?"

"Perfectly sure. Mr. Mortomley is not in a state of health to detail the methods he has employed to any one. I do not mean to say Mr. Rupert may not have got some information, but I do say he would require as much more to make it available, and I will take care he has no chance of obtaining any more."

"I hope you will, ma'am," was the frank reply, "for if I may make so free as to give you my opinion about Mr. Rupert, I think, fine young gentleman as he is, he would sell the nearest belonging to him for a ten pound-note."

"You have no right to say anything against Mr. Rupert,"

answered Mrs. Mortomley, "and there is no necessity for you to express any opinion concerning him. He will have nothing to do with our business, and therefore you need not trouble yourself about his character."

"I meant no offence, ma'am."

"And I have taken none, but I want to talk to you about business, and we are wasting time in speaking of extraneous matters. When shall you come back to England?"

"Whenever you want me."

"But you have certain work to finish abroad?"

"That is true; still, I can take a run over when you are ready to start our work. We shall have a good deal to prepare before we can begin in earnest, and I shall set a man I can depend on to do all that, and have everything ready for me by the time I am clear. You find the place, ma'am, and the money, and we need not delay matters an hour."

"Want of money is no obstacle now," she answered. "I can give you enough at any time."

"And where do you think of going?" he asked.

"Into Hertfordshire if I can find a house cheap enough. I shall look for the house first, and the shed you require afterwards."

"Remember, we must have water," he said. "Good water and a continuous supply."

"I shall not forget," was the reply.

"And you think you can find the memoranda?"

"I do not think I can. I think that from time to time I may be able to obtain all particulars from Mr. Mortomley."

Lang groaned. "You do not know, ma'am, on what a trifle success hangs in the colour trade. If you could only have got hold of the receipts the governor wrote out when he was at his best--"

"I do not believe he ever wrote out any," said Mrs. Mortomley.

"He must have done it," was the reply. "No memory, let it be good as might be, could carry things like that."

"If there had been a book such as you suppose, it would have gone up to Salisbury House with the rest of my husband's books and papers. If it ever existed Mr. Swanland has it."

"I don't think it, ma'am. If Mr. Swanland knows nothing except about accountants' work, he has those in his employ who would have understood the value of such a book as that."

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Dolly pettishly. "Do you suppose any one in Mr. Swanland's office ever waded through the mass of papers Meadows sent up to town? Why, there were tons of letters, and books and papers, in the offices at Homewood."

"That may well be," agreed Lang; "but Mr. Mortomley never kept his secrets among the office papers. Had he not desks and writing-tables, and the like?"

"Yes; but we left everything in them untouched. I should have liked to look over the papers after Meadows came, but I was afraid to meddle with them."

"Well, it cannot be helped," remarked the man resignedly. "Mayhap, by the time we are ready, Mr. Mortomley will be able to help us; if not, we must depend on the colours I know something about."

And having uttered this consolatory reflection, Mr. Lang arose to depart.

"I expect I'll have to be backwards and forwards," he observed; "and if I am, I'll call to know how things are going on; but if not, you'll write, ma'am."

"I will write," she answered; and so they separated.

Thinking it possible her husband might have fallen asleep, Mrs.

Mortomley, when she went upstairs, opened the drawing-room door so gently that no one heard her enter.

At a glance she saw her husband, though awake, was lost in reverie, and that Rupert was copying the formula Mortomley had written out into his pocket-book.

"What are you so busy about, Rupert?" she asked, startling him by her question.

He turned a leaf over rapidly and answered, "Making a sketch, of Archie in a 'brown study.'"

"When you come to the accessories of the drawing, let me fill them in,"

she suggested, lifting the paper as she spoke from the table and looking Rupert steadily in the face.

"I have no doubt you would do so better than I," he replied with imperturbable composure. "A woman's imagination is always so much livelier than that of a man."

She made no reply to this. She only folded up the formula and placed it carefully beside Mrs. Werner's cheque in the pretty purse her friend had given her.

CHAPTER IV.

MORTOMLEY'S BLUE.

The new year brought with it much glorification of spirit to the manager of St. Vedast Wharf and the two men whose fortunes were, to a certain extent, associated with the temporary success of the General Chemical Company Limited.

Never before had so satisfactory a balance-sheet been presented to the shareholders of that company,--never before had a good dividend been so confidently recommended,--never had accountants audited accounts so entirely satisfactory, or checked securities so stamped with the impress of solvency,--never had the thanks of every one been so due to any body of directors as on that special occasion, and never had any manager, secretary, and the other officers of any company been so efficient, so self-denying, so hard-working, and so utterly conscientious as the manager and other officers connected with that concern which was travelling as fast to ruin as it knew how.

The way in which these things are managed might puzzle even a man experienced in City ways to explain, since each company has its own modes of cooking its accounts and hoodwinking the public. But these things are done,--they were yesterday, they have been to-day, they will be to-morrow; and if you live so long, my dear reader, you will hear more about yesterday's doings, and to-day's, and to-morrow's when, a few years hence, you peruse the case of Blank _v._ Blank, or Blank _v._ the Blank Company Limited, or any other improving record of the same sort.

The worst of the whole matter is that our clever financiers always keep a little in advance of the law, as our clever thieves always keep a little in advance of our safemakers. The gentlemen of a hundred schemes complacently fleece their victims, and Parliament--wise after--says in solemn convocation that the British sheep shall never be shorn in such and such a way again with impunity.

Nevertheless, though not in the same way, the sheep is shorn daily, and the shearer escapes scot-free with the wool. Always lagging behind the wit of the culprit comes the wit of the law. It is only the poor wretches who have no brains to enable them to take a higher flight than picking pockets that really suffer.

"You are a hardened ruffian," says the judge, looking through his spectacles at the pickpocket who has been convicted about a dozen times previously, "and I mean to send you for five years where you can pick no more pockets," which indeed the hardened ruffian--stripping off all the false clothing philanthropists love to deck him with--deserves most thoroughly. But, then, what about the hardened ruffians who are never convicted, who float their bubble companies and rob the widow and the orphan as coolly as Bill Sykes, only with smiling faces and well-clothed persons?

It is unfair, no doubt, these should escape as they do scot-free, and yet I must confess time has destroyed much of my sympathy with the widow and the orphan who entrust their substance to strangers and believe in the possible solvency--for such as them--of twenty per cent. One is growing particularly tired of that countryman, so familiar to Londoners, who loses his money because two total strangers ask if he has faith enough to trust one or the other with a ten-pound-note, and it is difficult to help feeling that a sound flogging judiciously administered to one of these yokels who take up so much of a magistrate's time, would impress the rural mind throughout England much more effectually than any number of remarks from his Worship or leaders in the daily papers.

As one grows older, one's intolerance towards dupes is only equalled by one's intolerance towards bores. A man begins by pitying a dupe and ends by hating him; and the reason is that a dupe has so enormous a capacity for giving trouble and so great a propensity for getting into it.