"It has come to that."

Mrs. Werner found it a more difficult task to induce Mortomley to accept her invitation than she had expected it would prove; but eventually her arguments and his love for Dolly carried the day, and he agreed to go to Brighton, and stay with his wife's friend for a week, or perhaps ten days.

"I must get well," he said, "before the meeting of creditors, and I feel I can never get well here. You are very, very kind, Mrs. Werner. Dolly and I will be but dull guests I fear; but you must put up with our--stupidity."

And he stretched out his thin wasted hand which she took in hers, and there came before them both a vision of the old house at Dassell, embowered in trees, with its green lawns and stately park, its low, spacious rooms, its quiet and its peace, where he first met Dolly in the summer days gone by.

Looking back over one's experience of life, it seems marvellous to recollect how few words one ever has heard spoken in times of danger or of trial; how the once fluent tongue is paralysed by the overflowing heart; how trouble stands sentinel beside the lips, and bars the utterance of sentences which in happier times ran glibly and smoothly on.

In the time of their agony, Mortomley had nothing to say, and his wife but little.

He made no lamentation nor did she. Ruin had come upon them, and how they should make their way through it no man could tell; but they were silent about their griefs. It was upon the most ordinary topics Mrs.

Werner and Mortomley discoursed, whilst Dolly's utterances to Esther were of the most commonplace description. How a portion of their luggage was to be sent to Brighton, and the remainder, except the small amount Dolly proposed taking with her, left at Homewood until further orders.

How Esther was to be certain to look after her own comforts, and purchase trifling luxuries for herself, how Mrs. Mortomley depended on her writing every day, and trusting the posting of the letters only to Lang or Hankins--with fifty other such little charges--this was all she found to say while packing up to leave the dear home of all her happy married life in the possession of strangers. _And such strangers._

As she thought of it, Dolly flung open the window and looked out.

Oh! fair--fair home--smiling with your wealth of flowers under the dark autumnal sky, can it be that when those whose hearts have been entwined about you are gone, who have loved you with perhaps too earthly a love, are departed, you shall turn as sweet a face and give as tender a greeting to the future men and women destined to look upon your beauty as you did to those who are leaving you for ever?

No, thank God, there comes a desolation of place as there comes a wreck of person; nature seems to sympathize with humanity, and when the old owners have been torn from the soil, the soil as if in sympathy grows weeds instead of flowers--grows a tangle of discontent where sweet buds were wont to climb.

If in prophetic vision Dolly had been able at that moment to see Homewood as it appeared six months after, she would have felt comforted.

As it was, she looked forth over the sweet modest home which had been hers and his with a terrible despair, but she bore the pain in silence.

"First or last," as Esther said afterwards, "she never heard a murmur from husband or wife."

Which was perhaps why she loved them both so well. With every vein in her heart that simple country girl, who was not very clever, but whose heart stood her amply instead of brains, loved the master and mistress upon whom misfortune had fallen so suddenly, and to her thinking so inexplicably.

Physically she was not brave, but she would have faced death to keep trouble from them. She was not possessed of much courage; no, not the courage which will go downstairs alone if it hears a noise in the night, but she would have encountered any danger had Dolly asked her to do so.

It was well Mrs. Mortomley possessed a larger amount of common sense than any one gave her credit for, otherwise she might have incited her maid to deeds the execution of which would have filled Mr. Forde's soul with rejoicing. Dolly sternly prohibited all looting from the premises.

Not a trunk she packed or saw packed, but might have borne the scrutiny of Mr. Swanland himself, and yet the modest bonnet-box and portmanteau carried down into the hall failed to meet with the approbation of Mr.

Swanland's man.

"I am very sorry, ma'am," he said, "but I cannot allow these things to leave the house without Mr. Swanland's permission."

Dolly turned and looked at him. I think if a look could have struck him dead where he stood, he had never spoken more.

With all the authority of Salisbury House behind him, Meadows quailed at sight of her face, wondering what should follow.

But nothing followed except this:

"Take those things upstairs at once," she said, turning to Esther and Lang, "put them in my dressing-room with the other boxes, and bring me the key of the door."

"I do not know, madam," remarked Mr. Meadows, emboldened by what he considered her previous submission, "whether you are aware that if you lock the door we can break it open."

Then Dolly found tongue.

"Do it," she said; "only break open _any_ door I choose to lock, and I will make things unpleasant for you and your master too. I have endured at your hands and his what I believe no woman ever endured before, but if you presume another inch I will have justice if I carry our case into every court in England."

She did not know, poor soul, her cause had been settled in a court whence there is no appeal, and for that very reason speaking fearlessly her words carried weight.

Mr. Meadows shrank out of the hall as if she had struck him a blow, and Dolly leaning against the lintel of the porch and looking at Mrs.

Werner's carriage and horses, which were framed to her by a wreath of clematis and roses, felt for the moment as if she had won a victory.

And by her retreat she had; but it is only after the battle any one engaged can tell when the tide of war began to turn.

It turned for the Mortomleys then. It turned when Mrs. Mortomley lifted up her voice and defied Mr. Swanland's bailiff. In that moment she ensured ultimate success for her husband--at a price.

The years are before him still--the years of his life full of promise, full of hope--that past of bankruptcy, recent though it may be, is, nevertheless, an old story, and the name of Mortomley is a power once more.

There is nothing the man is capable of he need despair of achieving, nothing this world can give him he need fail to grasp, and yet--and yet--I think, I know, that rather than go forth and gather the pleasant fruits ripening for him in distant vineyards, rather than pay the price success exacted ultimately for her wares, the man would have laid him down upon the bed a man in possession held in trust for his employer, and died a pauper, entitled only to a pauper's grave.

But no man can foresee. Happily, or else how many would live miserable.

Dolly could not foresee; she could not foretell the events of even four-and-twenty hours.

But she was nice to others in that her time of trial, and the fact served her in good stead in the evil hours to come.

"I think," she had said to Esther, "that Lang and Hankins would like to see Mr. Mortomley before we go. Lang had better give my husband his arm downstairs, and Hankins can help him into the carriage."

It was nice of Dolly, it was never forgotten about her for ever. It never will be till the children's children are greyheaded. By the carriage door stood the pair, hats in hand, tears running down their cheeks, speaking across Mrs. Werner to their master; their master whom they had loved and robbed, cheated and served honestly, believed in and grumbled concerning through years too long to count. And away in the background were a group of men, the faces of whom appalled Mr. Meadows, men who would have pumped on him had Mrs. Mortomley given the signal, who loved their master, though it might be they had not acted always honestly or straightforwardly by him, and who would at that moment have done any wickedness in his service, had he only pleased to show them the way.

With a mighty effort Dolly choked back her tears.

She heard the men say,

"And we wish you back, sir, better."

To which Mortomley replied,

"I hope I shall be better, but you will see me here no more."

"No more." Lang opened the door of the carriage for Dolly, who shook hands with him and his colleague ere the vehicle drove off.

"No more." Mortomley had said in those two words farewell to Homewood.

No more for ever did a Mortomley pace the familiar walks, or cross the remembered rooms. No more--no more--with the wail of that dirge in their ears the men went back to their labour exceedingly sad in spirit.

Mr. Meadows, however, was not sad. He sought out Esther crying in a convenient corner.

"Well, I am glad they are gone," he exclaimed, "and shall I tell you why?"

"You can if you like," Esther agreed, wiping her eyes with her muslin apron, which she had donned in honour of Mrs. Werner, "though for my part I do not care whether you are glad or sorry."

"Well, when I came here I was told to _watch your mistress_, and it has not been a pleasant occupation. I told Swanland it was all gammon thinking she was not on the square. Of course we know all about that, but he said his information from some one--Forde, I suppose, was clear, and that money was put away, and I must find out where. As if," added Mr. Meadows, with a gesture of ineffable contempt, "people like your people did not fight to the last shot, did not eat the last biscuit before surrendering. Of course I understand the whole thing, and I have but to repeat, so far as I am concerned, I am----glad they are gone."

"Let me pass, please," said Esther with a shudder. "I do not want to hear anything more about you or your master, or Mr. Forde--or--anybody,"