Mrs. Mortomley put her cold hand in Kleinwort's as she had put it into that of Forde, and said good-bye to the one man as she had said it to the other, with a wintry smile.

So they parted. Never--for ever did she see either of the two again.

Meantime, they drove back to London together in silence--silence broken only once.

"What are you doing, Kleinwort; why don't you speak?" asked Mr. Forde.

"I am thinking--thinking, my friend," was the reply.

"Then I wish to Heaven you would not think," said the unfortunate manager. "It is deucedly unpleasant, you know."

"You are so what you call droll," observed Mr. Kleinwort with cheerful calmness.

An Englishman must be artificially iced before he can ever hope to attain to a foreigner's degree of coolness.

CHAPTER II.

KLEINWORT AND CO. IN CONSULTATION.

Drowning men catch at straws. It is not the fault of the straws that they fail to save, and assuredly it is not the fault of the drowning men that they carry the straws to destruction with them.

The General Chemical Company on that Friday evening when Mr. Kleinwort was asked to bring his persuasive powers to bear on the recusant family at Homewood, chanced to be in precisely the state of a drowning man making frantic clutches at safety, and Mr. Forde's worst enemy might have pitied him had he understood all Mr. Mortomley's "going" meant to the manager of St. Vedast Wharf.

He had driven out to Homewood vowing that Mortomley, willing or unwilling, should not stop, and it was only when he found affairs had passed beyond his control, that he began to think whether there was no way out of the difficulty.

Like an inspiration the idea of keeping the whole thing quiet, of hoodwinking his directors, and of holding the ball still at his feet, occurred to him.

He had to do with fools, and he humoured them according to their folly, and indeed the notion of suggesting the substitution of the Company's solicitor for the solicitor of Mr. Mortomley amounted almost to a stroke of genius.

To Kleinwort there was a certain humour in the idea of first gibbeting a man as a rogue, and then treating him as a simpleton. It was a feat the German performed mentally every day, but then he kept the affair secret between himself and his brains. He did not possess the frankness of that "so droll Forde," and the tactics of his friend tickled him extremely.

And yet, truth to say, Mrs. Mortomley was not so supreme an idiot as the autocrat of St. Vedast's Wharf imagined.

She had her misgivings, which Rupert pooh-poohed, declaring that peace was well purchased at so small a price, and that for such a purpose one lawyer was quite as good as another.

"Still, I should like to speak to Archie's solicitor about it," she persisted.

"That is what you cannot do, for he is out of town," answered the young man; "and very fortunate that he is, for if you went to him and he went to Forde there would only be another row, and the whole affair perhaps knocked on the head again."

"I thought no one could prevent Archie petitioning," she remarked.

"Neither can any one," was the reply; "but it might be made confoundedly unpleasant for him after he had petitioned."

Which all sounded very well, and was possibly very true, but it failed to satisfy Dolly.

Sleep had not for many a long month previously been a constant visitor at Homewood, and whenever Mrs. Mortomley awoke, which she did twenty times through that night, the vexed question of Mr. Benning's interposition recurred to her.

Look at it in whatever light she would, her mind misgave her. If it made no difference in the end, if it were no advantage to the Chemical Company, she could not understand the object of so strange a proposal.

Rupert had indeed explained the matter by saying, "Forde wanted the thing kept quiet;" but then why should the thing be kept quiet. In whose interests and for whose benefit was it that such secrecy had to be maintained. Pestered as her husband had been with demands for money, with writs, and with sheriff's officers and their men, it seemed to Mrs.

Mortomley that all the world must already be acquainted with the position of their affairs.

"What can the object be they have in view?" she asked over and over again whilst she lay thinking--thinking through the long dark hours.

"How I wish Mr. Leigh were in town?" And then all at once she bethought her that within a walk of Homewood there resided a gentleman with whose family she had some slight acquaintance, and who chanced himself to be a solicitor.

This fact had been stamped on Dolly's mind by hearing of the unearthly hours at which even in the dead of winter he was in the habit of breakfasting so as to admit of his reaching his offices, situated somewhere at the west, by nine o'clock.

"I will ask him, and be guided by his reply," she decided, and accordingly she rose at cock-crow and, dressing herself in all haste, went across the fields, along the lanes to that sweet residence the lawyer prized so much, and of which he saw so little.

She met him at his own gate, and asked permission to walk a little way with him towards the station. "She wanted to ask only one question," she said, "but it was necessary to preface that by a little explanation."

In as few words as sufficed for the purpose--and Heaven knows very few suffice to tell a man is ruined--Mrs. Mortomley laid the state of the case before her acquaintance.

"Will it make any difference to my husband if Mr. Benning applies to the Bankruptcy Court instead of Mr. Leigh?" she finished by inquiring.

"None whatever," was the unhesitating reply.

"You are certain?" she persisted.

"Yes; I cannot see why it should alter his position or injure him in the slightest degree."

"Does it not strike you as a very extraordinary proposition?"

"Well, yes," he agreed, "but no doubt it will be desirable for Mr.

Mortomley to raise no obstacle against their wishes. It is always advantageous for a man to have a large creditor on his side."

"Mr. Halling says they want to keep the affair quiet," she went on. "Why should they want that, and how should employing their own solicitor enable them to do it?"

"I can only conjecture," was the answer, "that they desire the extent of their own loss not to be made public, and by employing their own solicitor they will manage to keep the application out of the papers."

"I am very, very much obliged to you," she said as they shook hands.

"Not at all," he replied. "Command me at any time if I can be of service to you," and they parted; but she had not retraced a dozen steps before he ran after her and said,

"I think, Mrs. Mortomley, were I in your place I should see Mr. Leigh whenever he returns to town."

Which in all human probability Mrs. Mortomley would have done without his recommendation. Nevertheless, the hint was kindly meant, as his previous opinion, spoken by an utterly honourable man, had been honestly given.

Upon the whole, however, I am not quite sure, seeing what one sees, whether honourable men and thoroughly conscientious lawyers are exactly the fittest people to help and counsel those who have reached the crises of their lives.

Through the years to come, at all events, Dolly carried a certain agonised memory of that morning walk, and the consequences her adviser's words ensured to her and hers.

It was a fine September morning, the last fine morning that month held in the especial year to which I refer. Had she been able to shake an instinctive dread off her mind, she would, escaping for the hour from the sight of sickness and the haunting feeling of men in possession, have thoroughly enjoyed the calm landscape, the long stretches of country across which her eyes, wearied though they were with night watching, could roam freely. To right and to left lay the flat rich Essex lands on which cattle were browsing peacefully, whilst at no great distance were patches and pieces of woodland left still to tell Epping once was more than a near neighbour to all the hamlets that formerly nestled under its leafy shadows, and which are now becoming part and parcel of the Great Babylon itself. In the distance she beheld dark masses of foliage standing out darkly against the sky, showing that there the monarchs of the forest still held the axe and the lords of the soil at defiance, whilst ever and anon the light, rapid feet tripping along field-paths, bordered by grass still wet and heavy with dew, passed close by some stately park over which the silence and peace of riches seemed brooding.

But as matters stood, the fresh morning air and the silence and the peace conferred upon other people by the riches possessed by them brought little balm to Dolly.