He had a good, not to say superior, address. He spoke very fair English, he wrote a capital hand, and possessed a considerable amount of education. The routine of business was evidently familiar to him, though he was of course utterly ignorant of every detail of the colour trade.

Still he asked a sufficient number of pertinent questions, to convince Lang he felt determined to acquire such a smattering of knowledge as might enable him to talk glibly on the subject hereafter to people who did understand about the matter.

At the end of two days Mr. Lang had taken the "new man's" measure, but still he was puzzled to imagine what he could have been originally, and how he ever came to adopt so low a calling.

With Hankins the first question of interest was, whether the chemicals were still to be had from St. Vedast Wharf.

"You had better ask Mr. Swanland about that," was the answer. "He will be here this evening."

"What does he know about chemicals or colours either?" inquired Hankins.

"Well, he is obliged to know something about everything," replied Mr.

Meadows. "He is an uncommonly clever gentleman."

"One of those who can learn without being taught, I suppose," suggested Hankins.

"You have hit it pretty nearly," answered the other, in a tone which checked any further inquiries at that moment on the part of Mr. Hankins.

In the evening Mr. Swanland accompanied by Mr. Benning arrived, to make, in his double capacity of trustee and manager, arrangements for carrying on a business of which he knew almost as much as Mrs. Mortomley did of algebra.

Lang and Hankins and a subordinate foreman had been instructed to wait his coming, and perhaps to this trial of patience the remark of the latter, that "Swanland was the greatest swell for a man in possession he had ever seen," might be ascribed.

And indeed in one way his observation was strictly true, for whereas the individuals sent from time to time by descendants of all the twelve sons of Jacob, to keep watch and ward over the Mortomley goods and chattels, only came in for a slice of the estate, Mr. Swanland came for all.

At one swoop he had everything in his hand; without inventory or formality of any kind, save announcing himself as manager and trustee, he took a comprehensive grasp of Homewood and all it contained. The horses in the stables, the chemicals and colours in the works, the bed the sick man lay upon, the flowers in the garden, the exotics in the greenhouse, the cat curled up before the hall fire, the dogs raving at the length of their chains at the intruder, the pigeons in the dovecote, and the monarch of the dunghill, all belonged to Mr. Swanland. On the Saturday morning previously he had scarcely been aware that such a man as Mortomley was in existence. If he had accidentally heard his name, no memory of it remained; whilst as for Homewood, the place might have been a station in Australia for aught he knew about it.

And now he was master. Nominally the servant of the creditors, and ostensibly acting for the bankrupt, he was as truly the lord of Mortomley, the controller of his temporal destiny, as any southern planter ever proved of that of his slaves.

Whether the gentlemen, commercial and legal no doubt, who concocted the Bankruptcy Act of 1869, and the other gentlemen of the Upper and Lower Houses who made it law, ever contemplated that an utterly irresponsible person should be placed in a responsible position it is not for me to say, but I cannot think that any body of men out of Hanwell could have proposed to themselves that the whole future of a bankrupt's life should be made dependent on the choice of a trustee, since it is simple nonsense to suppose a committee selected virtually by him and the petitioning creditor have the slightest voice in the matter.

And if any man in business whose affairs are going at all wrong should happen to read these lines, which unhappily is not at all probable, since literature at such a time chiefly assumes the form of manuscript, let him remember liquidation means no appeal, no chance of ever having justice done him, nor even, remote contingency,--supposing the trustee a cool hand like Mr. Swanland,--of setting himself right with the business world.

He who goes into liquidation without first being sure of his trustee, his lawyer, and his committee passes into an earthly hell, over the portals of which are engraved the same words as those surmounting Dante's 'Inferno.'

He has left hope behind. God help him, for nothing save a miracle can ever enable him to retrace the path to the spot where she sits immortal.

At Homewood Mr. Swanland was in possession, and yet Dolly never suspected the fact. Her first uneasiness arose from a few words uttered by Mr. Benning.

"I suppose the business will be carried on," he remarked, sitting in the pleasant drawing-room with his feet stretched out towards the fire and his hands plunged in his pockets. Dolly could not avoid noticing that all these dreadful men did keep their hands in their pockets, as if they had no use for them anywhere else. "We must get a manager, I suppose."

Now was Dolly's opportunity.

"The business cannot be carried on except by some one who understands it thoroughly," she said.

"I do not suppose there will be any difficulty about that," he answered.

"Competent people are always to be had if one knows how to look for them."

"Do you mean," she inquired, "that my husband will not have the management of his own business. Under Mr. Swanland I mean of course,"

she added.

"Mr. Mortomley's health seems quite broken up," said Mr. Benning. "It would be simple cruelty to ask him to attend to business. After the meeting of creditors the best thing he can do will be to go to some pretty seaside place in Devonshire or Cornwall, and live there comfortable upon your money."

For a minute the wretched woman sat silent facing her misery. Leave Homewood! leave the business of which her husband thought so much!

Perhaps it was not true, perhaps she had not understood him.

"Do you really think we had better go away, away altogether," she gasped.

"Certainly," he answered.

At that moment, that critical moment, when she was about to ask if such a proposal were possible what the meaning of liquidation could be, Mr.

Swanland, pale, bland, pleasant, courteous, Mr. Asherill's perfect gentleman the accountant cat, with his claws sheathed in velvet, folded in his muff, purring complacently, re-entered the room.

"Well, Mrs. Mortomley," he said, "everything seems most satisfactory.

The trade appears good and the men employed respectable. Yes, thank you; I will take a cup of tea."

This was between the lines, and when Mrs. Mortomley handed him the tea she noticed how he stirred it, not at all as Mr. Asherill's perfect gentleman should have done, but holding the spoon upright.

"It is a shame for me to be so hypercritical," she thought. "I dare say he is a far honester man than this dreadful lawyer."

And so she inclined her ear to his pleasant words.

"Do not think, Mrs. Mortomley," he said, as he was leaving, with a sudden uplifting of his Albino eyes, "that because I am placed here in a disagreeable position I wish to make matters disagreeable to you. Pray let me hear from you when you want anything, and be quite sure it is my desire to act towards you as a friend in every way."

And he put out his hand.

Dolly took it, and thought she must by some accident have got hold of a frog.

Kleinwort was right. Mr. Asherill's partner had no digestion and no heart.

The more Mrs. Mortomley thought about Mr. Swanland the less she believed in him, spite of his plausible manner and his pleasant utterances, and when she crept into bed that night she caught herself wondering whether there could be any good in a person whose hand was like wet clay and who stirred his tea as the accountant stirred his.

Mr. Swanland left Homewood with an instinctive knowledge that the _quondam_ mistress of that place disliked him, which knowledge touched the trustee in no vulnerable point.

It made, however, some slight difference to Mrs. Mortomley in the future, that future which, lying awake in the darkness, she vainly tried to forecast.

CHAPTER IX.

IN THE 'TIMES.'

If there was trouble at Homewood on that especial Wednesday, it had not been a day of unmixed pleasure to two people in the city.

His worst enemy might have pitied Mr. Forde when on opening the 'Times,'

lying over the back of the official chair at St. Vedast Wharf, the first sentence which met his eye was,

"Before Mr. Commissioner Blank." "_Re_ Archibald Mortomley," and all the rest of it.