She did not answer, but she touched his arm with her hand entreatingly.

Looking down at the face upraised to his, he saw her eyes were full of tears. Lose Homewood! why it had never looked fairer than it did at that moment, with the evening sun shining athwart its lawns. Lose Homewood!

where she had been so happy; it would be worse than death.

"Oh! Rupert," she cried at last, and she clung to him entreatingly, "you did not mean it--say you did not."

"I declare Dolly, you are prettier than Lenore," he answered irrelevantly, as it may seem; but the fact was, all at once, in that moment of mental anguish, of pathetic helplessness, he saw something in the woman's face he had never beheld there before--something grief had developed already, a grace and a beauty hitherto concealed.

"Dolly," he went on vehemently, "if I can keep Homewood for you I will; but you must help, you must not let Archie turn back from the battle. It is true, dear, I do not go on my own judgment; if he is not firm now, we shall all be lost!"

As he spoke he was unlocking the postern door, which admitted them to a small court which, in its turn, gave ingress to the foreman's office as well as to the more private offices of the establishment, Mr.

Mortomley's own room and laboratory included.

When they entered the court, Hankins, the foreman, was fastening his door and came to meet them, swinging a great bunch of keys on his fingers in a _debonnaire_ manner the while.

Out of respect or, shall we say, gallantry he raised his hat to Mrs.

Mortomley. Rupert's "Good evening," he answered with a nod. Mr. Hankins was a working-man of the very advanced type, who thought much of himself, and but little consequently of any one else. He was a clever fellow, as all Mortomley's picked men were, and fairly faithful and honest as the world goes now-a-days, which is not perhaps far.

But he understood his business and he did his work, and he saw that others did it also. Now that the day's labour was over, he had been, as he informed his visitors, "just taking as usual a look round to see everything was right."

"Mr. Lang gone?" asked Rupert.

"Yes, sir, not five minutes ago;" and Mr. Hankins swung his bunch of keys again as a polite intimation to Mr. Halling that it was not part of his contract to stand talking to him all night.

"You got some more barytes in to-day," remarked Rupert, wilfully disregarding the hint.

"You can call it barytes, of course, sir, if you like," was the reply, "I call it stuff."

"It is not good then?"

"Good! Now I should just wish you to see it. Naturally, not having been brought up to the business, you cannot be supposed to know all the ins and outs of our trade, but a child might tell the inferiority of this.

If not detaining you, sir, I really should feel obliged by your stepping this way," and with an air he flung open the door of his office, and pointing to a powder of a whity-brown colour lying on the desk, asked ironically,

"That is a first-rate article, ain't it, sir?"

Rupert shook his head; and Mr. Hankins thus encouraged, pressed his point.

"Here, ma'am," he said, taking up an other parcel and opening it, "is something like. Look at the difference. I declare, upon my conscience,"

continued Mr. Hankins, turning to Rupert and forgetting in his energy the presence of his employer's wife, "it is enough to drive a man out of his mind to be obliged to sign a receipt-note for such rubbish. I often think things here might make people believe that old story the parsons tell about the Israelites being ordered to make bricks without straw.

After what I have seen this last eighteen months I fancy I could almost swallow anything," finished Mr. Hankins with that advanced and almost unconscious scepticism which is so curious an adjunct to skilled labour at this period of the world's history.

Rupert looked uneasily at his companion. At any other time she might have felt inclined to enter into a controversy with Mr. Hankins on the religious question, but at that moment her heart was so full of her husband's position that the orthodoxy or non-orthodoxy of any person's opinions seemed quite a secondary matter in her eyes.

"Surely," she began, "Mr. Mortomley is the only person to say here what is good or bad. If he approves of this," and she pointed to the barytes, "it is not fitting any one else should disapprove."

"_Mr. Mortomley won't look at it, ma'am_," was the ominous answer. "If I go to him, he says, 'I am busy now,' or, 'you must do the best you can with it,' or, 'I will write and complain;' and all the while as fine a business as there is in the Home counties is going to the devil. I beg your pardon, ma'am, but I can't help saying it. You heard, sir, I suppose, that Traceys had sent back all the ten tons of Brunswick green," (Rupert nodded) "and if things go on much longer as they have been going, we shall have everything sent back. If it wasn't for the respect I have to Mr. Mortomley, I would not stay here an hour; and as it is, I do not know as how I can bear it much longer."

Which last was intended as a side blow to be carried by Mrs. Mortomley to her husband. Mr. Hankins folded up his samples, took his keys, said, "Evening, sir," "Good evening, ma'am," touched the brim of his hat, and sauntered leisurely across the yard leaving his visitors alone.

"I wanted you to hear, Dolly," said Rupert, "but I fear in my wisdom I have been a brute."

She did not answer, but she walked back steadily to the house. She dressed for dinner; and when that meal was served, they all sat down as people might the evening before an execution.

So far this narrative has been preliminary and introductory. In the next chapter the real story of Mortomley's Estate begins.

CHAPTER X.

MR. FORDE TAKES HIS HAT.

The stores, warehouses, and offices of the General Chemical Company (Limited), are situated, as all City folks know, on St. Vedast Wharf, Vedast Lane, Upper Thames Street.

Landing stages and railway bridges, which have altered the aspect of so many other places of business, have left St. Vedast Wharf untouched. And the curious inquirer will find it still presenting precisely the same appearance as it did in those early summer days of a few years back when it was still optional with Mortomley to do what he liked under certain conditions with his own estate.

Excepting Lower Thames Street, there is not probably in the city a thoroughfare so utterly given over to business and business doing, as Thames Street above bridge.

What Hyde Park is for carriages, it is for vans and carts. If timid people elect to walk along it, they must do so crossing from side to side, under the heads of great cart-horses to avoid the bales of goods, the reams of paper, the huge barrels, the heavy castings that come swinging down from the loop-holes of third and fourth stories, indifferent as to whether any-body or nobody is passing beneath.

All the lanes leading from it to the river are narrow and dingy and sunless, and Vedast Lane seems probably narrower and dirtier than most of its fellows, because many carts and waggons pass down it on their way to various huge warehouses, occupied by persons following different trades.

During all the working hours of the day, shouting and swearing and the lumbering of vans, and the trampling and slipping about of horses, cease not for one single instant; and it is notorious that the traffic of the whole lane was once stopped for four hours by a jibbing horse, who would probably have remained there until now, had a passer-by not suggested throwing a truss of straw under him and then setting fire to it, which produced such celerity of movement that the driver found himself in Bridge Street, having threaded the vehicles crowded together by the way, without let or hindrance, before he had sufficiently recovered his presence of mind to search about for his whip.

Arrived, however, at St. Vedast Wharf, the scene changes as if by magic.

One moment the foot-passenger is in the gloom and dirt and riot of a narrow City lane, the next all clamour and noise seem left behind.

Before him lies the Silent Highway, with its steam-boats, barges, and tiny skiffs threading their way in and out amongst the heavier craft.

Facing the river the imposing-looking warehouses of the General Chemical Company rear themselves story on the top of story. To the left lies London Bridge, the masts of the larger vessels showing at uncertain intervals between the stream of vehicles flowing perpetually over it, while to his right the old bridges and the new confuse themselves before him, so that he has to pause for a moment before answering the eager inquiries of a country cousin.

To look at the wharf, to look at the warehouses, to enter the offices, most people a few years back would have said,

"Here is a solvent Company. It must be paying large dividends to its shareholders."

Whereas the true history and state of the General Chemical Company chanced to be this:

When in the palmy days of "promoting," long before Black Friday was thought of, while the Corner House was a power in the City, the old and long established business (_vide_ prospectus of the period) of Henrison Brothers was merged into the General Chemical Company, Limited, with a tribe of directors, manager, sub-manager, secretary, and shareholders,--probably no one, excepting Mr. Henrison and his brothers and the gentlemen who successfully floated the venture, was aware that the old and highly respectable house was as near bankruptcy as any house could well be.

Such, however, was the case, but a considerable time elapsed before the directors and the shareholders found that out.

Mr. Henrison "consented" to remain as manager for one year after he and his brothers put the purchase-money in their pockets, (the shares they sold at discreet intervals), and it is unnecessary to say _he_ did not enlighten the Company he represented about that part of the business.

Neither did the sub-manager, who hoped to succeed Mr. Henrison, and who did succeed him. Neither did the secretary, whose ideas of the duties connected with his office were exceedingly simple.

To do as little work as possible, and to draw as much money as he could get, was the easy programme he sketched out for his own guidance; and that the programme pleased his audience may be gathered from the fact, that whilst shareholders varied, and directors resigned, and managers were supplanted, that fortunate official's name remained on the prospectus of the Company.

He beheld Henrison fulfil his year. He was on friendly terms with the sub who succeeded him. He still nodded to that ex-sub and manager when he was discharged for malpractices. He preserved his equanimity when the next manager, also discharged, brought his action against the Company for wrongful dismissal, and the Company, their eyes beginning to open, compromised the matter rather than let the public light of day in on the swindle Henrison Brothers had practiced.