He received no telegram; nothing had been heard from Mr. Kleinwort at that gentleman's office; the head clerk feared he could not be so well; and Mr. Forde started off by the next train to Hastings.

Arrived there, he ascertained Mr. and Mrs. Kleinwort had left for London on the previous Friday evening.

By the time Mr. Forde again reached the City all business was over for the day, and the offices closed for the night, therefore the unhappy manager, dreading he knew not what, fearing some evil to which he felt afraid to give a shape or a name, repaired to Mr. Kleinwort's private residence.

He looked up at the house, and as he did so his heart sank within him; not a light was to be seen in any one of the windows, the lower shutters were closed, there was straw littering about the garden. His worst enemy might have pitied him as he stood there hoping he was dreaming, hoping he should wake to find that he had been struggling with some horrible nightmare.

When he could gather strength to do it, he began knocking at the door--knocking till he woke the deserted house with echoes that simulated the sound of hurrying feet--knocking till the neighbours opened their doors, and put their heads out of the windows to ascertain what was the matter.

"There is no one in that house, sir," shouted an irascible gentleman from the next balcony.

"There is no use in your trying to knock the door down. The house is empty, sir. The family left a week ago, and the last of the furniture was removed on Saturday."

"Where have they gone?" asked Mr. Forde in a weak husky voice, which sounded to his own ears like that of some different person.

"To South America. Mr. Kleinwort has got an appointment there under his own government."

That was enough. The manager knew for certain Kleinwort had thrown him over, that he had eight days' start of any one who might try to follow.

How it had been managed; how the Hastings juggle was performed; who had helped him to hoodwink those who might be interested concerning his whereabouts, he felt too sick and dizzy even to imagine.

There was only a single fact he was able to realise; namely, that between him and ruin there stood now but one man, and that man Henry Werner.

CHAPTER VII.

MORTOMLEY UNDERSTANDS AT LAST.

The summer following that autumn and winter when Mortomley's Estate was in full course of liquidation proved, if not the hottest ever remembered, at least sufficiently warm to render Londoners who had to remain in town extremely impatient of their captivity, and to induce all those who could get away to make a rush for any place within a reasonable distance where sea-breezes or fresh air could be obtained.

It was a summer in which everything was as dull as can well be imagined.

Trade was dreadful; each man seemed losing money, and no man confessed to a balance of five pounds at his bankers'. If City people were to be believed, a series of unprecedented misfortunes compelled them, one and all, to ask for outstanding accounts and to request the return of such small amounts of money as in moments of mental aberration they had been induced to lend to their impecunious friends, whilst it happened most unfortunately that a series of disappointments and misfortunes equally unprecedented prevented the payment of accounts and the return of loans.

Making, however, due allowance for excuses and exaggeration, things were very bad indeed. That badness affected all trades--touched all ranks.

People were not rich enough to be ill, they could not afford to die, and so even the doctors and the undertakers found things hard, and believed fees and feathers had gone out of fashion.

"Persons in course of liquidation were to be envied," so Mr. Swanland with a faint attempt at humour assured his visitors, while Mr. Asherill declared that really he wished he could go into the 'Gazette' and so get a holiday.

If you were on sufficiently intimate terms to inquire concerning the fruitful vine and the olive branches belonging to any City man, you were certain to hear the vine and the olives had been transplanted temporarily to some easily accessible resting-place, to which the husband and father declared to you upon his word of honour he had not the means of proceeding on that especial Saturday afternoon when you spoke to him in Finch Lane.

Nevertheless, had your way been his, you would have met him an hour after, taking his ticket for some well-known terminus.

Even Mr. Dean could not manage to leave town, and Mrs. Dean was, therefore, at Scarborough with some Essex friends who had invited her to join their party.

Mrs. Werner was at Dassell with her children, The old lord was dead, and that Charley, who had once wished to marry his cousin, proposed taking up his residence at the family seat. If this resolution were carried out, Mrs. Trebasson intended to leave the hall, notwithstanding her nephew's cordially expressed hope that she would still consider it her home.

Naturally, therefore, Mrs. Werner availed herself of the opportunity, still left of paying a long visit to the old place, and Mr. Werner had begged her not to hurry back, as "he could do very well without her"--which utterance he did not intend to be ungracious, neither did his wife so understand it.

As for Mortomley and his wife, they were far away from London.

In one of the most remote parts of Hertfordshire where woods cover the lonely country for miles, where the silvery Lea flows through green fields on its way to the sea, never dreaming of the horror and filth it will have to encounter ere mingling with the Thames--where the dells are in the sweet spring time carpeted with violets, blue and white, that load the air with perfume--where rabbits scud away through copses starred with primroses--where jays plume their brilliant feathers in the golden sunshine--where squirrels look with bright curious eyes at the solitary passer-by--where pheasants scarcely move out of the way of a stranger's footsteps--where, save for the singing of birds, and the humming of insects, and the bleating of sheep, there is a silence that can be felt--Dolly had found a home.

As seen from the road as picturesque a cottage as painter need have desired to see, but only a poor scrap of a cottage architecturally considered--a labourer's cottage originally, and yet truly as Dolly described it to Mrs. Werner--a very pretty little place.

The ground on which it stood rose suddenly from the road, and the tiny garden in front sloped down to the highway at a sharp angle. On one side was a large orchard, which went with the house, and on the other a great field of growing wheat already turning colour.

Behind the cottage was first its own ample vegetable garden, and then one of the woods I have mentioned, which formed a background for the red-tiled roof and tumbledown chimneys of the Mortomleys' new home.

Dolly had seen the advertisement of a place she thought might suit to let in this locality, and so chanced to penetrate into wilds so far from London.

As usual, the place advertised was in every respect undesirable, and Dolly wore herself out wandering about interminable lanes looking for a vacant cottage and finding none.

All this was in the early spring when the leaves were only putting forth, when Daffodils, Mezerion, and American currant alone decked the modest flower-gardens--when nature, in a word, had not yet decked herself in the beautiful garments of May, or in the glorious apparel of the year's maturer age.

But Dolly knew how that pleasant country place would look when the hawthorn was in bloom, and the roses climbing over the rustic porches, and the corn cut and standing in goodly sheaves under the summer sun.

There was not a mood or tense of country life Dolly did not understand and love, and she felt like a child disappointed of a new toy while wending her way back to the station to think her search had proved all in vain.

She was in this mood as she drew near the cottage I have described.

"I could be quite satisfied even with that," she considered. "I could soon make it look different," and she stood leaning over the gate and picturing the place with grass close under the window, with a few evergreens planted against the palings, with a rustic garden-chair with rustic baskets filled with flowers, on the scrap of lawn she herself had imagined.

As she so stood an old woman came to the door and looked down the walk at the stranger curiously.

"I was admiring your dear little place," said Dolly apologetically. "I think it is so sweet and quiet."

The woman trotted down to the gate on hearing these words of praise, and answered,

"Aye, it is main pretty in the summer, when the flowers are in full blow, and the trees in full leaf. I tell my master we shall often think of it in the strange land we are going to."

Now this sentence perplexed Dolly; owing to the tone in which it was spoken, she could not tell whether the woman meant she and her husband were going to heaven or to foreign parts, so she asked no question.

She only said, "I am sure you will think it no trouble to give me a glass of water. I have been walking a long way, and I am very tired."

"Come in and rest yourself then," the old lady exclaimed heartily, and she conducted Dolly indoors, and dusted a chair for her, and brought her the water ice-cold; and having elicited that Mrs. Mortomley had come all the way from London, that she had walked miles, that she had been to look at Hughes's house, and that neither bite nor sup had passed her lips since breakfast save that glass of cold water, she asked if her visitor would not like a cup of tea. The kettle was on, she said, and she could mash the tea in a few minutes.

Dolly was delighted, she wanted the tea, and she rejoiced in the adventure. What though the bread was home-made bread and as heavy as lead, to quote poor Hood; what though the tea was "mashed" till it was black in the face; what though the sugar was brown and of a treacley consistence,--the guest brought to the repast an appetite which charmed her hostess and amazed herself.

While Dolly sipped her tea, for she understood the teapot had no great force of resistance and could not hold out to great extremity, and the "darling old lady," as Mrs. Mortomley called her for ever afterwards, drank hers out of a saucer, the two women got into a friendly conversation, and the elder told the younger how she and her master were going to America to their only son, who, after being "awful wild," and a "fearful radical," often going well-nigh to break his father's heart, who had set "great store" by his boy, had started off fifteen years previously "for Ameriky unbeknown to living soul."

Arrived there it was the old story of the prodigal repeated, with a difference.

At home he had wasted his substance and neglected his parents. Abroad he repented him of his evil doings, and worked as hard in a strange country as he had idled in England.

He had married well, and was a rich man, and all he desired now was that his father and mother should make their home near him, share his prosperity, and see their grand-children.