"Mrs. Werner is in great trouble, and I must go to her. Do not ask me anything more," was the reply, and then Dolly leaned up against a great tree growing in the hedgerow, and shut her eyes, and felt as if the earth were going round and round. She understood, if no one else did,--she comprehended that of his own free will Henry Werner had gone on the longest and darkest journey the human mind can imagine--that his message to his wife would be given from one who sent it, knowing ere eight hours of the six months had elapsed he would have passed into eternity. This was why he had spoken so freely to her, and this was the reason he had extorted her forgiveness, and asked her to remember him in her prayers. Every other consideration in life was for the moment blotted out by the shadow of that man dead--dead by his own act--dead because the trouble was too great to be contended with, because the ruin was too utter to be endured.

Dolly went upstairs. She had paused by the way and swallowed some wine and water, to enable her tongue to perform its office.

"Archie," she said, as she nervously smoothed her husband's pillows, "I must go to London, and I want you to be quiet and satisfied while I am away. Leonora is in dreadful distress, and wants me. Mr. Werner is dangerously ill, not expected to recover, and she has great need of me.

I do not like leaving you, dear, but--"

"Go at once," he interrupted. "Kiss me and go, dear. I shall do very well indeed. Poor Werner! It is a curious thing I was dreaming about him yesterday. I dreamt he was here, and--"

"I must go, love," she said, unable to bear the interview longer.

"Good-bye."

And she was gone.

Now it so happened that Mrs. Mortomley chanced, without any reference to Mrs. Werner, to know Lord Darsham's then address, and consequently the moment she got into town she telegraphed this message to him.

"Leonora's husband has committed suicide. Pray come to her at once."

Mrs. Mortomley only sent this message because she considered that, by stating what she believed to be the literal truth, she would bring Leonora's cousin more rapidly to her assistance. In the then state of her nerves, sudden death by the Visitation of God seemed to her so slight a misfortune that she fancied pure death would appear a trifle to Lord Darsham.

That any one could ever really have supposed Mr. Werner died through illness or misadventure, never occurred to Dolly, who felt quite positive he had fully made up his mind to destroy himself when with her on the preceding day, and it was therefore with a frightful shock she learned upon arriving at her friend's house that every soul in it believed Mr. Werner, who was suffering from a severe attack of neuralgia, had died accidentally while inhaling chloroform to lull the pain.

"What a dreadful thing I have done!" she thought. "How shall I ever be able to make it right with Lord Darsham?"

And then Dolly went upstairs into that very room where Mr. and Mrs.

Werner had held their colloquy about the Mortomleys, and found Mrs.

Werner as nearly insane as a rational woman can ever be.

She was full of self-reproach, and Dolly thanked God for it. Knowing what she knew of the man's misery, it would have tried her almost beyond endurance to have listened to the faintest whisper of self-pity, but there was none.

Nothing save sorrow for the husband, taken so suddenly, for his children left orphaned, for the years during which she might have made him happier.

"I thought myself a good wife," she moaned, "but I was not a good wife.

I helped him as I imagined, but, Dolly dear, an ounce of love is worth a pound of pride any day. He wanted, he must have wanted, something more when he returned to this great cold, handsome house than a woman to sit at the head of his dinner table. I have thought about it all at Dassell, Dolly darling. I made up my mind, God helping me, to be more a wife to him than I had ever been, and it is all too late--too late--too late."

"I am afraid he had a great deal on his mind," Dolly ventured.

"Yes, there can be no doubt about that. He was so fond of business, and thought so much of money, and--"

"We won't talk about it, dear, now," Mrs. Mortomley said softly.

"Have you--seen him?" Mrs. Werner asked, after a pause.

"No," Dolly answered. "I should like to do so, though, if I may."

"You have quite forgiven him?"

"I had done that, Lenny, thank God, before this."

Just a faint pressure of the trembling fingers, and Dolly rose to go downstairs.

"Williams, I want to see your master," she said, and Williams forthwith conducted her into the same room where Messrs. Forde and Kleinwort had sat on that night when they came to Mr. Werner's house in quest of Mortomley.

There in the same dress he wore when last she saw him alive, he lay stiff and dead.

"Why has not something been done with him?" Dolly asked shuddering. "Why do you let him lie there like that?"

"We must not move him until after the inquest," said the man.

Mrs. Mortomley crept upstairs again--in her folly what had she done?

But for her this inquest might have passed over quietly, and a verdict of killed by an accidental dose of chloroform returned.

The hours of that day lengthened themselves into years, and when at last Miss Gerace arrived, she found her niece looking the picture of death itself.

"My dear child, you must go home," she said, gazing in shocked amazement at Dolly's changed face and figure. "All this is too much for you."

But Dolly said, "No; if you love me, aunt, go to Wood Cottage and take care of Archie till I can leave Leonora. I must see the end of it. I will tell you why some day. I cannot leave now."

So Miss Gerace went to Wood Cottage, and wrapping her bonnet in a handkerchief laid it on the drawers in Lenore's room, and so solemnly set up her Lares and Penates in Dolly's house, and she broke the news of Mr. Werner's sudden death wisely and calmly to Mr. Mortomley, who turned his head from the light and lay very still and quiet, thinking mighty solemn thoughts for an hour afterwards.

"I think my poor Dolly ought not to stay there," he said at last. "She has had trouble enough of her own to bear lately."

"And I think your Dolly is at this moment just where God means her to be," answered Miss Gerace, a little gruffly, for she herself was uneasy about her niece's appearance, and in her heart considered Dolly stood in as much need of tender care as Mrs. Werner.

Just about the time when Miss Gerace was leaving, in order to make the, to her, unaccustomed journey to London, Mr. Forde sat alone in his office waiting impatiently for the appearance of Werner, or a note from him.

"You shall hear from me to-morrow before midday, without fail," Werner had promised on the previous forenoon, and whatever his faults he had never failed in a promise of this nature before.

"Ah! if that little wretch Kleinwort, who loved always to be talking evil about Werner, had only been like him, I need never have been reduced to the straits in which I find myself to-day," thought the unfortunate manager.

"Had any one planted an acre of reeds, Mr. Forde would have gone on transferring his simple faith from one to another till the last one broke." So Henry Werner declared; and no person understood so well as he that when his collapse ensued, the last poor reed on which the manager leaned would be broken to pieces.

That very morning when Mr. Forde waited for his constituents, as for some reason best known to himself he had latterly began to call the customers of the General Chemical Company, he had gone through one of those interviews with his directors, which, to quote his own phrase, "made him feel old," and he had pretty good grounds for believing that if Henry Werner, the last big card in his hand, failed to win him a trick he could not stay at St. Vedast Wharf.

In that case all must come out. The shareholders would begin to ask troublesome questions which the directors must answer; and he--well--he, with all his heart and soul wished when he put on his hat over Mortomley's affairs, he had kept it on and left St. Vedast Wharf for ever, shaking the dust off his shoes as he did so.

But now all he had to hope for was that Henry Werner would obey his commands, issued in no doubtful terms, and bring that which might satisfy his, Mr. Forde's, directors.

Werner had ordered him out of his office, indeed, words grew so high between them; but he had still said he should be heard of by midday, and now it was one o'clock and neither he nor any tidings had come.

Mr. Forde felt he could not endure being treated in this way any longer, so he walked across to Mr. Werner's office, where he asked young Carless, once in Mortomley's Thames Street Warehouse, if his master was in.

"He has not come yet," was the answer; and had Mr. Forde been looking at the clerks' faces instead of thinking of Mr. Werner's shortcomings, he would have noticed an expression on them which might well have puzzled his comprehension.

"I will wait for him," and Mr. Forde made a step towards the inner office as if intending to take up a position there.

"Better sit down here," said one of the senior clerks, offering him a chair; "the inner office is locked."