"What is it, dear, you are keeping from me? Is there any difficulty about getting the interest of your money. Mr. Daniells is in London I know, and the matter now ought to be put right. Tell me all about it, dear--why are we in this place, and why do you say we must remain here?"

"Because," Dolly began, and then stopped, hesitating how to frame her sentence.

"Because what?" he asked a little impatiently. "Come, dear, out with it; the trouble will not seem half so great or insurmountable when you share it with me. Because--"

"Because I have no money, Archie, now, except just a very, very little; because that has gone like everything else."

"Do you mean your fortune?" he asked.

"Yes, dear, the whole of it," she answered, determined he should know the worst at last.

"My God!" said Mortomley, and the expression sounded strange, coming from the lips of a man who rarely gave vent to any vehemence of feeling.

"What a fool I have been! what a wicked, short-sighted, senseless fool!

why don't you speak hardly to me, Dolly--I who have ruined you and Lenore?"

She stooped down and kissed him.

"Archie, I don't care a straw about the money; I did at first, and I was afraid, but I am not afraid now; if only you will be content and brave, and ready to believe small beginnings sometimes make great endings."

But he made no reply. He only rose, and walking to the door flung it open, and stood looking out over the pleasant landscape.

Dolly feigned not to notice him. She went to her work-table and began turning over her tapes and cottons with restless fingers, waiting, waiting for her husband to speak.

Then in a moment there came a tremendous crash, and Mortomley was lying on the matting which covered the floor, like one dead.

CHAPTER VIII.

MR. WERNER ASKS A FAVOUR.

About the very happiest hour of Dolly Mortomley's life was one in which her husband, still weak and languid, after watching her gliding about his sick-room, said--feebly it is true, but still as his wife had not heard him speak since the time of his first attack at Homewood--"My poor Dolly."

It was the voice of the olden time--of the never-to-be-forgotten past, when if she made burdens he was strong enough to carry them. In that pleasant country place the cloud which had for so long a time obscured his mental vision, was rent asunder, and the man's faculties that had so long lain dormant, were given back to him once more.

Dolly was right. No one save herself knew how ill Mortomley had been during all that weary time at Homewood, during the long sickness at Clapton, during all the months which followed when superficial observers deemed him well.

Though on that bright summer's morning, with his haggard face turned towards the sunlight, he looked more like a man ready for his coffin than fit to engage once more in the battle of life, there was a future possible for Mortomley again--possible even in those remote wilds where newspapers never came, except by post, and then irregularly; where the rector called upon them once a week at least; where the rector's wife visited Dolly every day during the worst part of her husband's illness; where fruit and flowers came every day from the Great House of the neighbourhood by direction of the owner, who was rarely resident; and where the gentry who were resident thought it not beneath their dignity to leave cards for the poor little woman who was in such sore affliction, and who would have been so lonely without the kindly sympathy of those who had--seeing her at church--considered her style of dress most unsuitable, perfectly unaware that Dolly was wearing out the silks and satins and laces and feathers of a happier time with intentions of the truest economy.

But Dolly was no longer unhappy.

"I am so thankful," she said to the rector's wife that day; "my husband is dreadfully weak still, I know, but he will get better--I feel it--I--"

But there she stopped; she could not tell any one of the old sweet memories those three words, "My poor Dolly," brought back to her mind; she could not explain how when she heard them spoken she understood Archie, her Archie, had been for a long time away, and was now come back and lying feeble it is true, but still on the highway to health in that upstairs chamber which her love had made so pretty for him.

Thus the scales of happiness vibrate, up to-day for one, down to-morrow for another.

It had been the turn of Messrs. Forde and Kleinwort once to stand between Dolly and the sunshine; it was the turn of both now to stand aside while the Mortomleys basked in it; from that very morning when Archie came back to life and reason, Mr. Forde knew for certain Kleinwort's little game was played out and that he had left England, himself not much the better for all his playing at pitch-and-toss with fortune, and every man he had ever been connected with the poorer and the sadder, and the more desperate, for his acquaintance.

Just a week after that day Dolly sat in "the house," as she still continued to call the front room, all alone.

She held work in her hand, but she was not sewing, she had a song in her heart, but she was not singing it audibly. She was very happy, and though she had cause for anxiety best known to herself, hers was not a nature to dwell upon the dark side of a picture so long as there was a bright one to it.

Upstairs Mortomley lay asleep, the soft pure air fanning his temples, and the songs of birds and the perfume of flowers influencing and colouring the matter of his dreams.

Lenore was at the Rectory spending the day. Esther had gone to the nearest town to make some purchases, and Mrs. Mortomley sat all alone.

Along the road, through the gate, up the narrow walk, came a visitor. He never looked to right or left, he never paused or hesitated for a moment, but strode straight to the door and knocked.

The door opened into "the house," which was indeed the only sitting-room the Mortomleys boasted, and Dolly rising, advanced to give him admittance. Through the glass she saw him and he saw her. For a second she hesitated, and then opening the door said, with no tone of welcome in her voice,

"Mr. Werner."

"Yes, Mrs. Mortomley, it is I," he answered. "May I come in?"

"You can come in if you like. As a matter of taste, I should not have thought you would like--"

"As a matter of taste, perhaps not," was the reply. "As a matter of necessity, I must."

After he entered they remained standing. Mrs. Mortomley would not ask him to sit down, and for a moment his glance wandered over the room with its floor paved with white bricks, shining and bright like marble, over the centre of which was spread some India matting.

He took in the whole interior with that rapidity of perception which was natural to him. He noticed the great ferns and bright flowers piled up in the fireplace. He saw wonderful palms and distorted cacti, all presents given to Dolly, the pots hidden away in moss, which gave so oriental a character to the quaint and modest home.

He beheld the poor furniture made graceful and pretty by Dolly's taste and skill, and in the foreground of the picture he saw Mrs. Mortomley, a mere shadow of the Mrs. Mortomley he remembered, it is true, clad in a gorgeous muslin which had seen service at Homewood, her hair done up over frizzetts which seemed trying to reach to the seventh heaven, her frills as ample and her skirts as much puffed as though she was living in a Belgravian mansion.

There was no pathos of poverty about Dolly. To look at her no human being could have conceived she had passed through such an ordeal as that I have endeavoured to describe.

Somehow one does associate sadly-made dresses and hair gathered up in a small knob at the back of the head with adversity, and well as Mr.

Werner knew Dolly her appearance astonished him.

"How is your husband?" he inquired at last.

"I cannot at all see why you should inquire," she replied, "but as you have inquired I am happy to say he is better, that I believe he will get well now, well and strong and capable."

"What is he doing now?"

"He is asleep, or was ten minutes ago."

"I did not mean that, I meant in the way of business."

"I decline to answer any questions relating to our private affairs,"

said Dolly defiantly.

Mr. Werner merely smiled in comment, a sad smile, full of some meaning which Dolly could not fathom.

"May I sit down?" he asked after a moment's pause.