"Really I cannot see the necessity. The presence of Mr. Swanland's clerk of course relieves you from all real responsibility."

"I suppose so--but still--"

"But still what?"

"When we leave Homewood we shall leave it for good. I feel that. I mean we shall leave it altogether, whether for good or for ill, whichever may befall."

"If you were to go from home for a few weeks, you would look at your position much more cheerfully," answered Mr. Leigh, who was not himself utterly unacquainted with some of the moods and tenses of a woman's mind.

"Mr. Benning said we should be quite free to go when once the meeting of creditors was over," Mrs. Mortomley remarked.

"That was an absurd observation," returned Mr. Leigh, "for you are perfectly free to go now."

"Yes; but he meant _for ever_," Dolly explained. "I am not mistaken,"

she went on. "He said they could get a manager, that my husband's health was broken, and that the best thing we could do was to go to some pretty seaside place and live there comfortably upon my money."

Mr. Leigh's face darkened. "I must see to this," he said, speaking apparently to himself; then added, "Trust me, Mrs. Mortomley, I will do all in my power for you. I am afraid you have made one false step, but we must try to remedy it as far as possible. In the meantime most certainly I should get Mr. Mortomley away for a time. The state of his health complicates matters very much. Have you--excuse the question, but I know how suddenly these things sometimes come upon men of business--have you money?"

"Yes, thank you," she answered. "I have enough for the present; at least, Rupert has money of mine, and I can get it from him."

"And you will try to remove Mr. Mortomley," he went on, "and pray let me hear from you, and send me your address. Do not be so despondent, Mrs.

Mortomley. Only get your husband well and everything will yet be right."

She smiled, but shook her head incredulously.

"You are very kind, Mr. Leigh," she said, "and I only hope your pleasant words may prove true prophecies. If they do not, when once we know the worst, whatever that may prove, we must try to bear it. I think we shall be able," added Dolly a little defiantly, drawing herself up about a quarter of an inch. She was so little she had generally to go about the world stretched out as much as possible.

"She is not a bad specimen of a woman, if she only knew how to dress herself suitably," thought Mr. Leigh after her departure, "but I am afraid she is not the wife poor Mortomley ought to have had at a crisis like this."

Which was really very hard upon Dolly, who had not the slightest intention of ever reproaching Mortomley--as a model wife might have done--because of the ruin that had come upon them.

Rather she was considering as she walked to Fenchurch Street how she should keep knowledge of this latest misfortune from him.

And then as regarded her dress, so objectionable in the eyes of a man who knew exactly the sort of sad-coloured garments appropriate for such an errand as Mrs. Mortomley's, does any intelligent reader suppose it was one atom too rich or too rare in the opinion of those four young ladies from Chigwell with whom Mrs. Mortomley travelled on her return journey?

Nay, rather they reported when they reached their own home, that Mrs.

Mortomley looked nicer than usual, was pleasanter and more talkative even than her wont, and _beautifully dressed_, they added as the crowning point in her perfections.

If they had known what Dolly thought about them, they might not have been so enthusiastic in her praise.

Having no one near at hand in whom she could confide, she marvelled to herself,

"I wonder whether on the face of the earth there is any creature so utterly wearisome as a human being."

CHAPTER XII.

LEAVING HOMEWOOD.

Days passed--days longer than had ever previously been known at Homewood--the weather, which brightened up for Mrs. Mortomley's visit to Salisbury House, became on the Sunday as bad as ever again, and continued rainy and miserable during the early part of the week. The men in possession did not leave. It was understood they were to be paid. Mr.

Swanland had hoped to get rid of them without going through this ceremony, but finding the law against him, and having an objection to part with money, arranged for them to stay on till he had "sufficient in hand," to quote his own phrase, to settle their claims.

Meantime on the Saturday there had been almost a turn out of the workmen, who were kept waiting for their wages until it suited Mr.

Bailey's convenience to go down from London to pay them.

They grumbled pretty freely concerning this irregularity; so freely, indeed, that Mr. Bailey told them if they did not like Mr. Swanland's management they had better leave. Whereupon they said they did not like Mr. Swanland's management if it kept them kicking their heels for five hours when they might have been at home, and that they would leave.

On hearing this, Mr. Bailey drew in his horns, and said they had better not be hasty, and that he would speak to Mr. Swanland. To both of which suggestions they agreed somewhat sullenly, and so ended that week.

The next opened with the valuation of the Homewood furniture and other effects--as a "mere matter of form," so Mr. Swanland declared--but, like the trustee's, the auctioneer's men took possession of the place as if it belonged to them, and without either with your leave or by your leave, walked from room to room making their inventory.

Up to the time of their arrival Dolly had entertained hopes of inducing her husband to make an effort to get downstairs. For days previously she had been artfully striving to make him believe his presence in the works was earnestly needed. She had suggested his spending an evening in the drawing-room. She had on Sunday drawn a picture of the conservatory sufficient to have tempted any ordinary invalid to hazard the undertaking, but Mortomley's malady was as much mental as physical, and not any medicine she could administer was able to cure that mind diseased, which, no less than bodily illness, had stricken him with a blow so sudden and so sharp.

"We will see to-morrow, dear," was all the answer she could ever elicit.

All in vain she guaranteed him immunity from indignant creditors, who would persist in visiting Homewood in order to recite their wrongs, and to hope Mr. Mortomley would see _them_ safe at all events; in vain she promised that not a man in possession should cross his sight; in vain she spoke of the brighter days dawning before them; in vain she employed eloquence, and it may be a little deceit.

It was always, "We will see to-morrow;" but once the morrow came, the evil hour was again deferred when Mortomley should look on the face of his fair house dishonoured, when he should nerve himself up to pass where sacrilegious feet had trodden down the beauty and the grace, destroyed all the sweet memories which once clustered round and about the place where his father had lived, where he himself was born.

And sometimes Dolly felt angry and sometimes sad, but she never felt hopeless until those men intruding into the very room where Mortomley sat listlessly looking out at the gloomy sky, taught him the precise position he occupied.

With a white face Dolly watched their movements, and when in a short time they shut the door behind them, she went up to her husband and kissed his forehead.

"Should you not like to be away from all this?" she asked.

"Yes, if there were any place to which we could go away," was the answer.

"We must leave," said Dolly, and then--for she was growing wise--she sat down to calculate the cost.

She wanted to take him to the seaside, but she failed to see how that was to be managed.

She could have done it by running into debt, for her credit was good at those seaside places where she had been the idol of landlords and where tradespeople had delighted at her reappearance. But she had no intention of going into debt unless she saw some means of being able to repay those who put trust in her honesty.

She could not take her husband to the seaside, and yet she felt he must be got away from Homewood. The changed atmosphere of that once charming home was killing him. With the rare sympathy which women like Dolly, capable of putting themselves and their interests entirely on one side, possess, she understood that air breathed by those dreadful men was death to a person in his state of health; and she racked her brains to think of some plan by which she might get him away, even for a fortnight, from the sound of strange voices, from the haunting presence of Messrs. Turner and Meadows, and the other more insignificant sheriff's officer.

Not in the worst time they ever previously passed through, had Mrs.

Mortomley experienced such utter misery as that which fell to her lot after Mr. Swanland took the reins of government.

She knew utter anarchy prevailed in the works. She knew the men were at daggers drawn with each other, unanimous only in one desire viz., that of circumventing Mr. Meadows and outwitting his vigilance. She knew the horses were not properly attended to; and when Lang justly indignant at the proceeding, told her Bess had been put in one of the carts and sent out with a load for the docks, Mrs. Mortomley was fain to make an excuse to get rid of the man, that he might not see the passion of grief his news excited in her.

Helpless they were, both Mortomley and his wife. Ciphers where they had once had authority; mere paupers, living on sufferance in a house no longer theirs; by rapid degrees Dolly was learning what liquidation by arrangement really meant, and why Mr. Kleinwort had said her husband would find bankruptcy not all pleasure.

While she was pondering how to get away from it all, how to escape from the sight of ills she was powerless to cure, and the sound of complaints to which she was weary of listening, Thursday came, and with a, to her, startling discovery. Mr. Meadows, who after the first morning or so, decided it was more comfortable to lie in bed late than to get up early, had on the Wednesday evening left on Mr. Lang's desk a memorandum concerning some account-books which he wished sent up to Salisbury House, said memorandum being pencilled on the back of part of the very note at the end of which Mr. Swanland had made that inquiry concerning Mr. Mortomley's letters previously recorded.

This precious morsel Lang carried to Esther, who carried it to her mistress, who in her turn demanded from Mr. Meadows an explanation as to how it happened his employer dared to intercept her letters.