"Then I am sure I should not go were I in his place."

"He is obliged to go," answered Mrs. Mortomley. "There is no use mincing the matter. Archie is as utterly a slave as if his creditors had bought him body and soul. I do not know how he bears it; why he is able to bear it; or rather I do. If he understood our actual position, he would go mad."

"Have you not told him, then?" asked Mrs. Werner in amazement.

"No, I dare not tell him."

"You ought to do so--"

"I ought not, Leonora. Time enough to let him know we are utterly beggared when he is strong to bear the shock. Some day, of course, he must be told, but I shall defer the evil time as long as possible."

Mrs. Werner sighed. She looked round the small rooms and then at Dolly's changed face before she spoke again.

"And so everything was sold at Homewood?" she remarked at last.

"Everything," was the reply. "In the house, that is to say. The works are still carried on. Mr. Swanland wrote to Archie to say we could have the furniture at a certain valuation, and I answered the letter. If it is preserved among the archives of the house of Swanland, some future young cygnet of that ilk will marvel who the D. Mortomley was that penned such an epistle. Fancy when he knew how we were situated making such an offer. Just as if he believed we had a secret purse."

"He might have imagined your friends would come forward to help at such a crisis," said Mrs. Werner gently.

"I do not think Mr. Swanland's imagination ever took such an erratic flight as that," answered Dolly bitterly.

"Did you see the old place before it was dismantled?" inquired Mrs.

Werner. "I suppose not."

"Yes. I had to go over to point out an inlaid desk Mrs. Dean had forgotten in the excitement of her departure. Mr. Dean went to Mr.

Swanland and mentioned the omission. Mr. Swanland said that if Mrs.

Dean would call at Homewood and point out the article in question to his man, it should be taken to Salisbury House, there to await Mr. Dean's orders. Mr. Dean thought Mrs. Dean could not possibly go to Homewood in the present unhappy state of affairs. He suggested that 'his wife, etcetera, etcetera,' and Mr. Swanland said,

"'Quite so; yes, exactly.' Lang, who happened to be in the outer office, heard all this and told me about it.

"Then Mr. Dean and Mr. Swanland both wrote, requesting me to go to Homewood and point out the curiosity, and though very much inclined to say 'No,' still I went."

"Poor dear Dolly!" ejaculated Mrs. Werner, for there was a break in her friend's voice.

"I am glad I went," Mrs. Mortomley went on; "glad I saw the old home with its death face on. Otherwise, I might in fancy have imagined Homewood still alive, and it is dead. I should tell you that Meadows is no longer Mr. Swanland's lord-lieutenant there. The evening we left Homewood he went out with some of the men and got drunk, a process he repeated so often that at the end of a fortnight he was laid up with what he called inflammation of the lungs, and had to be carried off the premises. Then Mr. Swanland sent down another man, and that man took his wife into residence with him, together with five of the very ugliest children I ever beheld. They all squinted horribly--they all followed me about the place--they all looked at me--'so,'" and Dolly distorted the axis of her eyes to such an extent that Mrs. Werner covered hers up and said,

"Don't, Dolly; pray, pray, don't. Think if your eyes should remain as they are."

"Then they would resemble the eyes of those nice children," answered Dolly, who, in the genial atmosphere of Mrs. Werner's presence, seemed to be recovering her temper and her spirits. "Do let me tell you all about it, Lenny. The mother wondered I had not taken away my beautiful wool-work, evidently imagining I wrought those wonders of sofa-pillows and anti-macassars, which so much impressed her, with my own hand."

"'The last lady with whom I was,' she said, 'lamented nothing so much as her chairs; they were all done up with wool-work.'

"'Wasn't theirs forty thousand?' asked the biggest of the children, with one eye fixed on his mother's face, and the other roaming over the garden.

"'Yes, dear, it were a big thing,' she said hurriedly, evidently thinking I might feel hurt to know the 'lady' had been so much greater a personage than myself. 'She was in the public line you see, ma'am,' she went on, 'and the house was just beautiful. She cried about them chairs, she did. She said if she had known how things was a-going to be, she would have got them away anyhow.' And then the wretch went on to say how cheerful that public-house was in comparison with Homewood, and how she did hope they would get back to London before long, and how Mr. Swanland hated dogs; and how our men and their friends had got leave to take one and another, except poor old Lion, who was desired by nobody,--you remember Lion, Nora; and how she wished to gracious some one would soon take him, for 'the creature was half-starved and so savage no one dare go a-nigh him.'

"Then I asked how about the fowls and the pigeons and the cat; and the children in chorus told how the fowls were all stolen and the pigeons gone, and the cat so wild she would not come to anybody; and I wanted to get away and cry by myself, Nora, but they would not leave me--no, not for a moment.

"I had caught the braid of my dress on a bramble, and asked the woman to lend me a needle and cotton to run it on again, and when she was looking up those items and a thimble, I saw she had annexed my drawing box to her own use. 'It was a handy box,' she said. Do not imagine I cared for it, Lenny," added Dolly. "Unlike the lady in the public line, I had passed beyond that state in life when one cries for lost wool-work and desecrated girlish treasures."

"Do not go on--do not, Dolly," entreated Mrs. Werner.

"I will," answered Dolly pitilessly. "I have found my tongue and I must speak. I went out and called the cat--called and called, and at last from half a mile distant, as it seemed, the creature answered. I called and she still kept answering till she came in sight, and then, when she beheld those horrid children, she stopped--her tail straight on end, and her ears pricked up.

"'Stay where you are,' I said to the little wretches, and I went and caught and stroked her, and she rubbed her face against mine, and I felt her poor ribs, and the bones were coming through her skin--oh! Lenny, Lenny, I realized it all then--understood what our ruin meant to us and to the dumb brutes who had trusted to us for kindness."

Mrs. Mortomley laid her head on Mrs. Werner's lap, and sobbed as if her heart would break.

"Lion was wild with hunger," she went on after a pause. "When I unfastened his collar the children fled indoors, frightened lest he should eat them, and, God forgive me, I should not have cared if he had; and the horses--I could not unloose their halters and bring those poor brutes with me. I can talk about it no more.

"That day killed me. I do not mean that I am going to die, or any nonsense of that sort, but I am not the same Dolly I was--not the Dolly you knew once--and loved."

Mrs. Werner did not answer. She turned up Mrs. Mortomley's face and looked at it through blinding tears--no, not the Dolly of the olden time, not the Dolly she had loved so much, but another Dolly who was dearer to her an hundredfold than any woman she had ever previously known or ever might know again--a woman with a soft heart and a great courage, the bravest, tenderest, truest woman, woman ever loved.

Like a far-off echo was the love she had once felt for Mortomley himself. Like the sound of an air solemn and sweet was the love she felt for the friend of her youth, Mortomley's wife.

Two fine natures they possessed, those friends; but the finer, the truer, the loftier nature of the two was, spite of all her shortcomings, possessed by the woman who chanced to be in such sore distress, and Mrs.

Werner, with her strong intellect, grasped this fact.

"What were the men about," asked Mrs. Werner after a pause, "that they did not see after the animals you left behind?"

"My dear," said Dolly, "have you ever been in a house when the mother just dead has left no one behind to look after the children? I think every one must once in a lifetime have seen how the irresponsible, unruly brats comport themselves. Homewood is in that strait. The men are all at daggers drawn, each wants to be master, each wants to be a gentleman of leisure. There are five foremen and three managers seeing to the work now. Lang has left, or rather Lang has been dismissed."

"Why?" inquired Mrs. Werner.

"It is an old story now, as stories are with us--three weeks old at all events. Some great firm who had never done business with Archie before, sent to the Thames Street warehouse for a specimen of that wonderful blue which he brought out eighteen months ago, and of course the letter went on to Salisbury House.

"They knew nothing of the bankruptcy, and ordered, oh! some enormous quantity of it to be despatched to America.

"Well, Mr. Swanland sent this order to Homewood, and Lang went up to his office, and said plainly the blue could not be made unless Mr. Mortomley superintended the manufacture. Hankins went up and said it could. Lang came to Archie, and Archie wrote to Mr. Swanland offering to see that the order was properly executed.

"Mr. Swanland wrote in reply that he would not trouble Archie personally to superintend the manufacture, but if he would kindly send him a memorandum of the process it might be useful.

"Archie declined to do this. He said he was quite willing to produce the colour, but he could not give the formula.

"Mr. Swanland then appealed to Hankins, who said he knew all about the manufacture. Lang said no one knew how to manipulate the materials but Archie, and that Hankins had as much acquaintance with the process needful to ensure success as a donkey with Arithmetic.

"Mr. Swanland seemed to think there was something personal in Lang's utterances, and told him his services could be dispensed with after the following Saturday. Lang claimed a month's notice or four weeks' wages.

Mr. Swanland declined to give either. Lang threatened to summon him, at which idea Mr. Swanland laughed. Lang then went to a lawyer, who said he could not summon a trustee. Lang said he would do it for the annoyance of the thing, and so threw away half a sovereign which he now repents, because the case cannot come on. He has got another situation, a very good berth as he styles it. He is to have a (for him) large amount of money to go abroad as consulting manager to some great works in course of formation in Germany. One of the partners is an Englishman, and knew Lang at a time when he was in business on his own account. It will be a good thing for him," and Dolly sighed heavily.

Good things came to other people, but not to Mortomley or his wife.

"What a simpleton that Mr. Swanland must be!" remarked Mrs. Werner.

"For not accepting Archie's offer, I suppose you mean," suggested Mrs.

Mortomley. "I do not think so. What does he care about the trade, or the colours, or anything, so long as he can find work for his clerks, and knock up a fresh peg in his office on which to hang up the whole of the estate? Lang says--"

"Dolly dear, I do not care to hear what Lang says," interrupted Mrs.