Mortomley will never hold up his head again in the business world. It is well he has his wife's money to fall back upon, and I hope her friends will advise him to use it prudently--"

"Do you really say, sir, you think my uncle will not be able to pull through?"

"I do not exactly understand what you mean by pulling through," answered Mr. Dean, "but if you have any expectation of seeing his creditors paid, and he occupying his old standing, you will be very much disappointed, that is all."

"But, good heavens! the business is a fine business, and there is stock and plant and book debts, and--"

"I don't care what there is," interrupted Mr. Dean, "once an estate goes into liquidation or bankruptcy, stock and plant and good-will and book debts and everything else are really as valueless as old rubbish. What is the good of machinery if it is standing still? What is the use of a business unless it is worked, and that by somebody who understands it?

What do you suppose Homewood, and every stick of furniture in the house, and every ounce of stock in the works would fetch under the hammer?

Pooh! don't talk to me about creditors ever being paid when once affairs pass out of a man's own hands. There is where your uncle made his mistake. If he had come to me for advice a couple of years ago, I could have told him what to do."

"What ought he to have done?" asked Rupert.

"Why, faced his affairs, and then called a private and friendly meeting of his creditors. If there were one or two who opposed, he should, with the consent of those who did not oppose, have offered a sum to be rid of them altogether. He should then, furnished with authentic data, have said, "Now, here is a business worth so much a year. In so many years you can be paid in full. I must have a small income out of the concern for my services, and you can appoint an accountant to examine the books, check the accounts, and divide the money every three months." He would have been as much master in his own works as a man ever can be who is in debt. All these writs and other disgraceful embarrassments would have been avoided; but what is the use of talking of all this now?

Mortomley's Estate has been allowed to go to the dogs, and the dogs have got it, and it will be a very clever creditor indeed who manages to snatch even a morsel out of their mouths."

"But, sir," pleaded Rupert, "you advised the present course to be adopted."

"I said there was no other course now to be adopted," amended Mr. Dean.

"Could any man in his right senses say there was another way out of the difficulty, with men in possession and hungry creditors waiting impatiently to sweep the place clear? It is better that none should have money than that one should, to the exclusion of others; and this is where your uncle will be blamed, for paying out the men who proceeded to extremity, and not paying those who were patient and gave him time. No doubt he will get his discharge in due course, but how will that benefit him? He is done for commercially. He can never do any more good for himself or those belonging to him."

"I cannot see that exactly," answered Rupert. "If he were stripped to-morrow of every worldly effect, he could, given ordinary health, earn a very respectable income by means of his genius."

"What is genius?" inquired Mr. Dean, who was by this time standing before the fire and laying down the law in that manner which makes so many very commonplace gentlemen considered oracles by their wives and acquaintances. "Ah! you cannot tell me, I see; but I can tell you.

Genius is success. It is of no use declaring a man is clever or has great talents or exceptional abilities. I say prove it. How are you to prove it? Show me his banker's book, show me the receipts signed by his tradesmen, show me the style in which he lives, show me these things, and I will then believe he has possessed either the genius to make money or the genius to keep money when made by his father before him."

"Then you think the man who paints a picture can have no genius unless he is able to sell it likewise?"

"I am sure of it. That person is an idiot who, possessing a certain amount of sense, requires as much more to make use of it. Take your uncle's case. According to your statement he possesses genius. Well, what has it done for him, wherein is he better at this moment than one of his own workmen? He began life with a good business. Where is that business now? He had a respectable connection, and what must he do but allow himself to be drawn into a connection--pray do not suppose I mean to speak harshly of your father, who first introduced him to it--which seems to have been anything but respectable. Once entangled, his genius failed to show him any way out of the net he had allowed to enclose him.

His genius cannot enable him to make good articles out of bad. He marries a woman with money, and he tries to patch up his tottering credit with part of her fortune. If that is what genius does for a man, better have none say I. Now look at me," added Mr. Dean, after he had paused to take breath, and Rupert did look at him with as strong a feeling of repulsion as Dolly had ever felt. "No one ever accounted me clever. My father called me plodding Billy, and said I would never do much for myself or anybody else. What has the result been?"

If all his future had depended upon holding his peace at that moment, Rupert must have answered,

"That you seem to have done remarkably well for yourself at any rate."

"You are right," said Mr. Dean briskly, appropriating the remark as a compliment. "And in doing well for myself, I have done well for others.

I have employed clerks and servants. I have paid good salaries. I have never set myself up as being ashamed of my business, and my business has not been ashamed of me. I have never tried to push out of my own rank in life, but I have sat at banquets side by side with a lord, and many a time I have spoken after an earl at a public meeting. I might have stood for member of parliament, and may yet be in the House if after a year or two I feel disposed to interest myself in politics. Contrast my position with that of your clever uncle and say whether you do not agree with me that the true meaning of genius is success. Will not your sister be a vast deal better off at Elm Park with everything money can buy, than your little Mrs. Mortomley at Homewood with the sheriff's officer in possession? Am not I right in what I say? Have not I reason on my side?"

"You have so much reason," answered Rupert a little sadly, "that before long I shall come and ask your advice as to how I am to compass success.

To-night I have to take Leytonstone on my way back to Whip's Cross, a ride all round Robin Hood's Barn, is it not?"

"What are you going to Leytonstone for?" asked Mr. Dean.

"I--I have to see a man about a picture he wants me to paint for him,"

hesitated Rupert, for he did not wish to state the real errand on which he was bound, and, plausible romancer though he could be on occasion, Mr. Dean's question took him by surprise.

"Ah!" remarked Mr. Dean, a comfortable feeling of conscious righteousness diffusing a heightened colour over his face, already highly coloured with the glow of virtue and thirty-four port. "You must give up all that sort of work if you wish to be successful. I have never opened a ledger on Sunday, and I have tried to put business out of my mind altogether. If a man is to be successful, he must conform to all the usages of the country in which he happens to be placed. Now we are placed in England, and I do not know any country in which religion is made so easy; and if you think of it, religion is a most useful institution. It teaches the poor their proper place, and--"

Rupert could stand no more of this. "I have lived in a house, Mr. Dean,"

he answered, "where, I think, there was one genuine Christian at any rate, and I agree with you and him, that Sunday labour for gentle or simple is a thing to be avoided; but my work to-night is a work of necessity, and the Bible pronounces no curse on our performing it in such a case as that!"

"No, no, certainly not; I suppose you are short of money. Well, good evening; tell Mrs. Mortomley I will try to forget all she said to-day."

"Yes, I will tell her," answered Rupert, "and thank you very much for your kindness. Don't come out with me pray," he added,--which was an utterly unnecessary entreaty as Mr. Dean had no intention of doing so.

"I can find my way quite well. Good-night," and he went.

But when he had reached the middle of the hall, he paused, and drew a long deep breath.

"If I were in Antonia's place," he murmured, "sooner than marry that self-sufficient cad, I would go down to the Lea and drown myself, or else take poison."

Rupert really felt at the minute what he said, but the worst of it was that such minutes never, in the young man's nature, lengthened themselves into hours.

CHAPTER VI.

MR. GIBBONS' OPINION ON THE STATE OF AFFAIRS.

Furnished by Rigby with his coat and hat, assisted by that personage to put on his knickerbockers, Mr. Rupert Halling stood at the hall door waiting for Madam Bess to be brought round.

He had wished to mount in the stable-yard, but neither Housden nor Rigby would hear of such a thing.

"Well, it is coming down," ejaculated the butler; "Mr. Halling, sir, why don't you send the mare back to her comfortable stall, and stay here for the night."

"I do not mind the weather," answered Rupert, which was fortunate, for the rain was pouring in such torrents that the noise made by the mare's hoofs was inaudible through the rushing tempest, and it was only by help of the ostler's lanthorn that Rupert could tell where Bess stood shivering and cringing, as the drops pelted like hail-stones upon her.

But if the night had been ten times worse than was the case, Rupert would still have persisted in his intention of riding round by Leytonstone. Comfort and assurance he felt he must have, some accurate knowledge of their actual position he was determined to obtain for Dolly, and so he proceeded through the darkness, with the rain sweeping in gusts up from the south-east, and expending the full force of its fury upon horse and horseman wherever an opening in the forest glades exposed both to its violence.

A lonely ride, lonely and dreary, the road now winding through common lands covered with gorse, and broom and heather, now leading through patches of the forest, now skirting gravel and sand pits, and again passing by skeletons of new houses run up hastily and prematurely by speculative builders.

And wherever any other road which could possibly lead back to Homewood crossed that Rupert desired to pursue, a difference of opinion took place between him and Bess, she being quite satisfied that the way they ought to go was the way which led to her stable; Rupert, on the contrary, being quite determined that she should carry him to Leytonstone.

At length the violence of the storm somewhat abated, and as he passed the 'Eagle,' at Snaresbrook, from behind a bank of wild watery-looking clouds the moon rose slowly and as if reluctantly, whilst the wind grew higher and swept over the lonely country lying towards and beyond Barkingside in blasts that almost took away the young man's breath.

On the whole he was not sorry when he reached that great public-house which stands where three roads meet near the pond at Leytonstone. There he dismounted, and giving Bess in charge of a man who knew the mare and her rider well, he walked on past the church, down the little bye-street leading to the picturesque station, across the line, and so to a new road intersecting an estate that had been recently cut up for building, and where already houses were dotting the fields, where two or three years previously there was no sign of human habitation.

One of these houses belonged to Mr. Gibbons; he had bought it for a very low price, and nobly indifferent to the horrible newness of its appearance, to the nakedness of its garden, and that general misery of aspect peculiar to a suburb while in its transition state from country to town, he removed his household goods from Islington, where he had previously resided, and set himself at work to make a home in the wilderness.

He was a man content to wait for trees to grow, and shrubs to mature, and creepers to climb. His was the order of mind which can plant an asparagus bed and believe the three years needful for it to come to perfection will really pass away in regular course. He procured a mulberry-tree and set it, and he would have done the same with a walnut had the size of his garden justified the proceeding.

As it was, he looked forward to eating fruit grown on his own walls and espaliers; he directed the formation and stocking of his garden with great contentment. He built a greenhouse; he ordered in a Virginia creeper and a Wistaria, which he hoped eventually to see cover the front of his house; he put up a run for his fowls; and he talked with unconcealed pride of his "place near the forest," where his children grew so strong and healthy, he declared that the butcher's bills frightened him.

To men of this sort, men who are willing to sow in the spring, and patient enough to wait for the ripening in the autumn, England owes most of her prosperity; but ordinary humanity may well be excused if it shrink from the idea of settling down in a spic-and-span new house in an unfinished neighbourhood.

Rupert's humanity, at all events, accustomed as it was to the wealth of foliage at Homewood, to the stately trees and bushy shrubs, and matured gardens, and lawns covered with soft old turf, recoiled with horror from the naked coldness of Mr. Gibbon's residence, and his teeth chattered as the uncertain moonbeams glanced hither and thither over new brick walls, and stuccoed pillars, and British plate-glass, and all those other items which go to compose a British villa in the nineteenth century.

The wind, sweeping over the Essex marshes and across Wanstead flats, brought with it heavy gusts of showers, and one of these pursued Rupert as he ploughed his way over the loose stones and gravel which had been laid upon the road.