"I beg your pardon," observed Mr. Dean, not catching the drift of her pleasant sentence.

"I said," explained Dolly, speaking very slowly and distinctly, "that rats leave a sinking ship. So the story goes at all events, and I, for one, see no reason to doubt its truthfulness. If you think of it, what more natural than that they should go. They are detestable creatures in prosperity. Why should they alter their natures in adversity?"

"I am very stupid I fear," said Mr. Dean; "but I confess I fail to see the drift of your remark."

"I can make it plain enough," she retorted. "Here are a man and a woman who must have starved unless we or you had provided them with the necessaries of life. It was not very pleasant for me to have Antonia Halling here, but she has had the best we could give her; and never a cross look or grudging word to mar her enjoyment of the good things of this life--things she prizes very highly.

"As for Rupert, he has been treated by my husband as a brother or a son.

We made no difference between them and Lenore, except that I have denied my child what she wanted sometimes, and they have never been denied.

"And the end of it all is that when my husband's affairs go wrong, they leave us, and allow a stranger to break the tidings. That is why I call them rats, Mr. Dean--your _fiancee_ and her brother. I am sure heaven made Antonia Halling a helpmate--meet for you--for she is as selfish, as worldly, as calculating, and as cold as even Mr. Dean, of Elm Park."

Having finished which explicit speech, Dolly rose and gathered her shawl more closely about her figure, bowed, and would have left the room had Mr. Dean not hindered her departure.

"Mrs. Mortomley," he said, "I can make allowances for a lady placed as you are; but I beg leave to say you are utterly mistaken in your estimate of me."

"I am not mistaken," she replied. "I understand you better than you understand yourself. Do you think I cannot see to the bottom of so shallow a stream? Do you imagine for a moment I fail to understand, that last Thursday night you turned the question over and over in your mind as to whether you could give up Antonia Halling when I made you understand the position of her uncle's affairs? You have decided and rightly you cannot give her up. No jury would hold the non-success of a relation a sufficient reason for jilting a woman.

"And I really believe Antonia is so thoroughly alive to her own interests that she would take the matter into court. Good-bye, Mr. Dean.

You and your future wife are a representative couple."

"What an awful woman," said Mr. Dean, addressing himself after her departure. "I declare," he added, speaking to Rupert, who immediately after entered the room, "I would not marry Mrs. Mortomley if she had twenty thousand a year."

"How rare it is to find two people so unanimous in opinion," remarked Rupert with a sneer. He did not like Mr. Dean at the best of times, and at that moment he had a grudge against him, because he knew it was Mr.

Dean who must have told Mr. Forde about that twenty guineas for a sketch of the small Lenore. "I am sure poor mistaken Dolly would not marry you if you settled fifty thousand per annum on her. But what has she been saying to cause such vehement expression of opinion?"

"She says you and your sister are rats; that you have eaten of the best in the ship, and leave it now it is sinking."

"Upon my honour I am afraid Mrs. Mortomley is right," was the reply.

"Hers is a view of the question which did not strike me before; but it is not open to dispute. Still what would the dear little soul have one do? Stay with the vessel till it disappears? If she speak the word, I for one am willing to do so."

"I hoped to hear common sense from one member of this household at all events," was Mr. Dean's reply, uttered loftily and contemptuously.

"So you would from me if I were not in love with my aunt," Rupert answered tranquilly. "More or less, less sometimes than more, I have always been in love with Dolly. She is not pretty, except occasionally, and she can be very disagreeable; and she is some years older than myself; and she is an adept at spending money; and upon the whole she is not what the world considers a desirable wife for a struggling man. But she has--to use a very vulgar expression--pluck, and by Jove if I live to be a hundred, I shall never see a woman I admire so thoroughly as my uncle's wife. But this is sentimental," Mr. Halling proceeded. "And I stifle it at the command of common sense. On Tuesday I leave Homewood for those desirable apartments in which you wish me to play propriety to the future lady of The Elms."

Through the rain Mr. Dean drove away foaming with rage. Could he have lived his time over again, no Miss Halling would ever have been asked to grace his abode. No young person, with a vagabond brother in a velvet suit, should ever have been mistress of The Elms.

But Mrs. Mortomley had put the case in a nutshell. He must marry Antonia, though Mortomley were bankrupt ten thousand times over.

And Antonia knew it, and under the roof which had sheltered her for so many a long night, she returned thanks for the fact to whatever deity she actually worshipped.

It is not for me to state what god hers chanced to be, but certainly it was not that One of whom Christians speak reverently.

CHAPTER IV.

PREVISION.

Along the front and one end of the house at Homewood ran a wide low verandah, over which trailed masses of clematis, clustres of roses, long sprays of honeysuckle, and delicate branches of jasmine. In the summer and autumn so thick was the foliage, hanging in festoons from the tops of the light iron pillars depending from the fretwork which formed the arches, that the verandah was converted into a shaded bower, the sunbeams only reaching it through a tracery of leaves.

Up and down under the shelter of this verandah, Rupert paced impatiently for a few minutes after Mr. Dean's departure, the sound of the rain pouring on the roof making a suitable accompaniment to thoughts that were about the most anxious the young man's mind had ever held.

Now that the step had been taken and the die cast, liquidation assumed a different aspect to that it had worn when viewed from a distance.

Something he could not have defined in the manner of the two clerks filled him with a vague uneasiness, whilst Mr. Dean's determination that his _fiancee_ should be exposed no longer to the contaminating associations of Homewood annoyed him beyond expression. True, for some time previously he had been drifting away from his uncle. Whilst Dolly thought he was assisting her husband and still devoting himself to the town business, he was really working for many hours a week in his new painting-room, which he reached by taking advantage of that funny little railway between Stratford and Victoria Park, which connects the Great Eastern and the North London lines.

He had never entered the offices of the General Chemical Company since the day when he opened his lips to warn his uncle of the probable consequences of that weakness which induced him to struggle on long after he ought to have stopped. He very rarely honoured the Thames Street Warehouse with his presence, and he never interfered in the business unless Mortomley asked him to arrange a disputed account or call upon the representative of some country house who might chance when in town to take up his quarters at a West-end hotel.

Nevertheless, he did not like the idea of cutting himself utterly adrift from his relatives. Homewood had been home to him, more truly home than his father's house ever proved. Spite of all the anxiety of the later time, his residence under Mortomley's roof had been a happy period. He liked his uncle and his wife, and the little Lenore, and--well there was no use in looking back--the happy days were gone and past, and he must look out for himself. He could not afford to quarrel with Mr. Dean, and Dolly's bitter speech still rankled in his memory, but yet he had not meant to give up Homewood entirely, and Mr. Dean must have blundered in some way to leave such an impression on Mrs. Mortomley's mind.

"I will have it out with her at once," he decided, and he threw away his cigar, girt up his loins for the coming struggle, and re-entered the house.

He found Dolly in the library writing a letter. When he entered, she raised her head to see who it was, but immediately and without remark resumed her occupation.

There was a bright red spot flaming on each cheek, and a dangerous sparkle in her eyes, which assured Rupert the air was not yet clear, and that the storm might come round again at any moment.

But he knew the sooner they commenced their quarrel the more speedily it would be over, and so plunged into the matter at once.

"Dolly, what have you been doing to Mr. Dean? He has gone off looking as black as a thunder-cloud."

"I have been giving him a piece of my mind," she answered without looking up, and her pen flew more rapidly over the paper.

"Your explanation is not lady-like, but it is explicit," remarked Rupert, "I am afraid you will soon not have any mind left if you are so generous in disposing of it."

"If my mind proves of no more use to me in the future than it has in the past, the sooner I dispose of it all the better," was the reply.

"Do you think you are wise in commencing your present campaign by quarrelling with everybody?" he inquired.

"Yes, if every one is like Mr. Dean and--and other people."

"Meaning me?"

"Meaning you, if you choose to take the cap and wear it."

"Do you know Mr. Dean says he would not marry you if you had twenty thousand a year?"

"It is a matter of the utmost indifference to me what Mr. Dean says or thinks either."

"He told me you considered Antonia and myself little, if at all, better than rats."

"Did he happen to tell you what I thought of him?"

There was no shaming or threatening Dolly into a good temper when a mood like this was on her. So Rupert changed his tactics.

"Do put down your pen and let us talk this matter over quietly together."

"You had better go away and not ask me to talk at all," she answered; but she ceased writing nevertheless.