Kitabı oku: «The Shadow of Ashlydyat», sayfa 33

CHAPTER XX.
MRS. BOND’S VISIT

In the old study at All Souls’ Rectory—if you have not forgotten that modest room—in the midst of almost as much untidiness as used to characterize it when the little Hastingses were in their untidy ages, sat some of them in the summer’s evening. Rose’s drawings and fancy-work lay about; Mrs. Hastings’s more substantial sewing lay about; and a good deal of litter besides out of Reginald’s pocket; not to speak of books belonging to the boys, fishing-tackle, and sundries.

Nothing was being touched, nothing used; it all lay neglected, as Maria Godolphin’s work had done, earlier in the afternoon. Mrs. Hastings sat in a listless attitude, her elbow on the old cloth cover of the table, her face turned to her children. Rose sat at the window; Isaac and Reginald were standing by the mantel-piece; and Grace, her bonnet thrown off on to the floor, her shawl unpinned and partially falling from her shoulders, half sat, half knelt at her mother’s side, her face upturned to her, asking for particulars of the calamity. Grace had come running in only a few minutes ago, eager, anxious, and impulsive.

“Only think the state I have been in!” she cried. “But one servant in the house, and unable to leave baby to get down here! I–”

“What brings you with only one servant?” interrupted Rose.

“Ann’s mother is ill, and I have let her go home until Monday morning. I wish you would not interrupt me with frivolous questions, Rose!” added Grace in her old, quick, sharp manner. “Any other day but Saturday, I would have left baby to Martha, and she might have put off her work, but on Saturdays there’s always so much to do. I had half a mind to come and bring the baby myself. What should I care, if Prior’s Ash did see me carrying him? But, mamma, you don’t tell me—how has this dreadful thing been brought about?”

“I tell you, Grace!” returned Mrs. Hastings. “I should be glad to know, myself.”

“There’s a report going about—Tom picked it up somewhere and brought it home to me—that Mr. George Godolphin had been playing pranks with the Bank’s money,” continued Grace.

“Grace, my dear, were I you I would not repeat such a report,” gravely observed Mrs. Hastings.

Grace shrugged her shoulders. George Godolphin had never been a favourite of hers, and never would be. “It may turn out to be true,” said she.

“Then, my dear, it will be time enough for us to talk of it when it does. You are fortunate, Grace; you had no money there.”

“I’m sure we had,” answered Grace, more bluntly than politely. “We had thirty pounds there. And thirty pounds would be as much of a loss to us as thirty hundred to some.”

“Tom Akeman must be getting on—to keep a banking account!” cried free Reginald.

Grace for a wonder, did not detect the irony: though she knew that Reginald had never liked Mr. Akeman: he had always told Grace she lowered herself by marrying an unknown architect.

“Seven hundred pounds were lodged in the Bank to his account when that chapel-of-ease was begun,” she said, in answer to Reginald’s remark. “He has drawn it all out, for wages and other things, except thirty pounds. And of course, that, if it is lost, will be our loss. Had the Bank stood until next week, there would have been another large sum paid in. Will it go on again, Isaac?”

“You may as well ask questions of a stranger, as ask them of me, Grace,” was her brother Isaac’s answer. “I cannot tell you anything certain.”

“You won’t, you mean,” retorted Grace. “I suppose you clerks may not tell tales out of school. What sum has the Bank gone for, Isaac? That, surely, may be told.”

“Not for any sum,” was Isaac’s answer. “The Bank has not ‘gone’ yet, in that sense. There was a run upon the Bank this morning, and the calls were so great that we had not enough money in the place to satisfy them, and were obliged to cease paying. It is said that the Bank will open again on Monday, when assistance shall have come; that business will be resumed, as usual. Mr. Godolphin himself said so: and he is not one to say a thing unless it has foundation. I know nothing more than that, Grace, whatever you may choose to infer.”

“Do you mean to tell me that there are no suspicions in the Bank that something, more than the public yet knows, is amiss with George Godolphin?” persisted Grace.

Isaac answered lightly and evasively. He was aware that such suspicions were afloat with the clerks. Chiefly led to by that application from the stranger, and his rude and significant charges, made so publicly. Isaac had not been present at that application. It was somewhat curious, perhaps—for a freemasonry runs amidst the clerks of an establishment, and they talk freely one with another—that he never heard of it until after the stoppage of the firm. If he had heard of it, he would certainly have told his father. But whatever suspicions he and his fellow-clerks might be entertaining against George Godolphin, he was not going to speak of them to Grace Akeman.

Grace turned to her mother. “Papa has a thousand pounds or two there, has he not?”

“Ah, child! if that were all!” returned Mrs. Hastings, with a groan.

“Why? What more has he there?” asked Grace, startled by the words and the tone. Rose, startled also, turned round to await the answer.

Mrs. Hastings seemed to hesitate. But only for a moment. “I do not know why I should not tell you,” she said, looking at her daughters. “Isaac and Reginald both know it. He had just lodged there the trust-money belonging to the Chisholms: nine thousand and forty-five pounds.”

A silence fell upon the room. Grace and her sister were too dismayed to speak immediately. Reginald, who had now seated himself astride on a chair, his face and arms over the back of it, set up a soft lugubrious whistle, the tune of some old sea-song, feeling possibly the silence to be uncomfortable. To disclose a little secret, Mr. Reginald was not in the highest of spirits, having been subjected to some hard scolding that day on the part of his father, and some tears on the part of his mother, touching the non-existence of any personal effects. He had arrived at home, for the fourth time since his first departure for sea, baggageless, his luggage consisting exclusively of what he stood up in. Of everything else belonging to him, he was able to give no account whatever. It is rather a common complaint amongst young sailors. And then he was always changing his ships.

“Is papa responsible for it?” The half-frightened question came from Rose.

“Certainly he is,” replied Mrs. Hastings. “If the Bank should not go on, why—we are ruined. As well as those poor children, the Chisholms.”

“Oh, mamma! why did he not draw it out this morning?” cried Grace in a tone of pain. “Tom told me that many people were paid in full.”

“Had he known the state the Bank was in, that there was anything the matter with it, no doubt he would have drawn it out,” returned Mrs. Hastings.

“Did Maria know it was paid in?”

“Yes.”

Grace’s eyes flashed fire. Somehow, she was never inclined to be too considerate to Maria. She never had been from their earliest years. “A dutiful daughter! Not to give her father warning!”

“Maria may not have been able to do it,” observed Mrs. Hastings. “Perhaps she did not know that anything was wrong.”

“Nonsense, mamma!” was Grace’s answer. “We have heard—when a thing like this happens, you know people begin to talk freely, to compare notes, as it were—we have heard that George Godolphin and Maria are owing money all over the town. Maria has not paid her housekeeping bills for ever so long. Of course she must have known what was coming!”

Mrs. Hastings did not dispute the point with Grace. The main fact troubled her too greatly for minor considerations to be very prominent with her yet. She had never found Maria other than a considerate and dutiful daughter: and she must be convinced that she had not been so in this instance, before she could believe it.

“She was afraid of compromising George Godolphin,” continued Grace in a bitter tone. “He has ever been first and foremost with her.”

“She might have given a warning without compromising him,” returned Mrs. Hastings; but, in making the remark, she did not intend to cast any reflection on Maria. “When your papa went to pay the money in, it was after banking hours. Maria was alone, and he told her what he had brought. Had she been aware of anything wrong, she might have given a hint to him, then and there. It need never have been known to George Godolphin—even that your papa had any intention of paying money in.”

“And this was recently?”

“Only a week or two ago.”

Grace pushed her shawl more off her shoulders, and beat her knee up and down as she sat on the low stool. Suddenly she turned to Isaac.

“Had you no suspicion that anything was wrong?”

“Yes, a slight one,” he incautiously answered. “A doubt, though, more than a suspicion.”

Grace took up the admission warmly. “And you could hug the doubt slyly to yourself and never warn your father!” she indignantly uttered. “A fine son you are, Isaac Hastings!”

Isaac was of equable temperament. He did not retort on Grace that he had warned him, but that Mr. Hastings had not acted upon the hint; at least not effectually. “When my father blames me, it will be time enough for you to blame me, Grace,” was all he said in answer. “And—in my opinion—it might be just as well if you waited to hear whether Maria deserves blame, before you cast so much on her.”

“Pshaw!” returned Grace. “The thing speaks for itself.”

Had Grace witnessed the bitter sorrow, the prostration, the uncertainty in which her sister was sunk at that moment, she might have been more charitable in her judgment. Practical and straightforward herself, it would have been as impossible for Grace to remain ignorant of her husband’s affairs, pecuniary or else, as it was for her to believe that Maria Godolphin had remained so. And, if fully convinced that such had indeed been the fact, Grace would have deemed her state of contented ignorance to be little less than a crime. She and Maria were as essentially different as two people can well be. Pity but she could have seen Maria then!

Maria was in her dining-room. She had made a pretence of going down to dinner, not to excite the observation and remarks of the servants: in her excessive sensitiveness she could not bear that they should even see she was in grief. Grace, in her place, might have spoken openly and angrily before the household of the state of affairs. Not so Maria: she buried it all within her.

She could not eat. Toying with this plate and that plate, she knew not how to swallow a morsel or to make pretence of doing so, before the servants, standing by. But it came to an end, that dinner, and Maria was left alone.

She sat on, musing; her brain racked with busy thoughts. To one of the strangely refined organization of Maria Hastings, a blow, such as the one fallen, appeared more terrible even than it was. Of the consequences she as yet knew little, could foresee less; therefore they were not much glanced at by her: but of the disgrace Maria took an exaggerated view. Whether the Bank went on again or not, they seemed to have fallen from their high pedestal; and Maria shrank with a visible shudder at the bare thought of meeting her friends and acquaintances; at the idea of going out to show herself in the town.

Many would not have minded it; some would not have looked upon it in the light of a disgrace at all: minds and feelings, I say, are differently constituted. Take Mrs. Charlotte Pain, for example. Had she enjoyed the honour of being George Godolphin’s wife, she would not have shed a tear, or eaten a meal the less, or abstained by so much as a single day from gladdening the eyes of Prior’s Ash. Walking, riding, or driving, Charlotte would have shown herself as usual.

Pierce came in. And Maria lifted her head with a start, and made a pretence of looking up quite carelessly, lest the man should see how full of trouble she was.

“Here’s that Mrs. Bond at the door, ma’am,” he said. “I can’t get rid of her. She declares that you gave her leave to call, and said that you would see her.”

Maria seemed to grow hot and cold. That the woman had come for her ten-pound note, she felt convinced, induced to it, perhaps, by the misfortune of the day, and—she had it not to give her. Maria would have given a great deal for a ten-pound bank-note then.

“I will see her, Pierce,” she said. “Let her come in.”

Mrs. Bond, civil and sober to-night, came in, curtseying. Maria—ah, that sensitive heart!—felt quite meek and humbled before her; very different from what she would have felt had she had the money to refund. Mrs. Bond asked for it civilly.

“I am sorry that I cannot give it to you to-night,” answered Maria. “I will send it to you in a day or two.”

“You promised, ma’am, that I should have it whenever I axed,” said she.

“I know I did,” replied Maria. “If I had it in the house I would give it you now. You shall have it next week.”

“Can I have it on Monday?” asked Mrs. Bond.

“Yes,” answered Maria. “Shall I send it to you?”

“I’d not give you the trouble,” said Mrs. Bond. “I’ll make bold to step up again and get it, ma’am, on Monday.”

“Very well,” replied Maria. “If Miss Meta was here, she would ask after the parrot.”

“It’s beautiful,” exclaimed Dame Bond. “It’s tail’s like a lovely green plume o’ feathers. But I ain’t got used to its screeching yet. Then I’ll be here on Monday, ma’am, if you please.”

Maria rang the bell, and Pierce escorted her to the door. To return again on Monday.

Maria Godolphin never deemed that she was not safe in making the promise. Thomas Godolphin would be home then, and she could get the note from him.

And she sat on alone, as before; her mind more troubled, her weary head upon her hand.

CHAPTER XXI.
A DREAD FEAR

Can you picture the sensations of Maria Godolphin during that night? No: not unless it has been your lot to pass through such. She went up to her bedroom at the usual time, not to excite any gossip in the household; she undressed mechanically; she went to bed. It had been much the custom with herself and George to sleep with the blinds up. They liked a light room; and a large gas-lamp in Crosse Street threw its full light in. Now, she lay with her eyes closed: not courting sleep; she knew that there would be no sleep for her, no continuous sleep, for many and many a night to come: now, she turned on her uneasy couch and lay with her eyes open: anything for a change in the monotonous hours. The dressing-table, its large glass, its costly ornaments, stood between the windows; she could trace its outlines, almost the pattern of its white lace drapery over the pink silk. The white window-curtains were looped up with pink; some of the pretty white chairs were finished off with pink beading. A large cheval-glass swung in a corner. On a console of white marble, its frettings of gilt, stood Maria’s Prayer-book and Bible, with “Wilson’s Supper and Sacra Privata:” a book she frequently opened for a few minutes in a morning. A small ornamental bookcase was on the opposite side, containing some choice works culled from the literature of the day. On the table, in the centre of the room, lay a small travelling-desk of George’s, which he had left there when packing his things. All these familiar objects, with others, were perfectly visible to Maria’s eyes; and yet she saw them not. If the thought intruded that this comfortable bedchamber might not much longer be hers, she did not dwell upon it. That phase of the misfortune had scarcely come to her. Her chief sensation was one of shivering cold: that nervous coldness which only those who have experienced intense dread or pain of mind, ever have felt. She shivered inwardly and outwardly—and she said perpetually, “When will the night be gone?” It was only the precursor of worse nights, many of them, in store for her.

Morning dawned at last. Maria watched in the daylight; and lay closing her eyes against the light until it was the usual time for rising. She got up, shivering still, and unrefreshed. Many a one might have slept through the night, just as usual, have risen renovated, have been none the worse, in short, in spirit or in health, for the blow which had fallen. Charlotte Pain might have slept all the better. Il y a des femmes et des femmes.

It was Sunday morning, and the church bells were giving token of it, as it is customary for them to do at eight o’clock. When Maria went down to breakfast, it was nearly nine. The sun was bright, and the breakfast-table, laid with its usual care in the pleasant dining-room, was bright also with its china and silver.

Something else looked bright. And that was Miss Meta. Miss Meta came in, following on her mamma’s steps, and attended by Margery. Very bright in her Sunday attire. An embroidered white frock, its sleeves tied up with blue ribbons, and a blue sash. Careful Margery had put a large white pinafore over the whole, lest the frock should come to grief at breakfast. On Sunday mornings Meta was indulged with a seat at her papa and mamma’s breakfast-table.

The child was a little bit of a gourmande, as it is in the nature of many children at that age to be. She liked nice things very much indeed. Bounding to the breakfast-table, she stood on tiptoe, her chin up, regarding what might be on it. Maria drew her to a chair apart, and sat down with the child on her knee, to take her morning kiss.

“Have you been a good girl, Meta? Have you said your prayers?”

“Yes,” confidently answered Meta to both questions.

“She has said ’em after a fashion,” cried Margery. “It’s not much prayers that’s got out of her on a Sunday morning, except hurried ones. I had to make her say the Lord’s Prayer twice over, she gabbled it so. Her thoughts are fixed on coming down here; afraid breakfast should be eaten, I suppose.”

Maria was in no mood for bestowing admonition. She stroked the child’s fair golden curls fondly, and kissed her pretty lips.

“Where’s papa?” asked Meta.

“He is out, dear. Don’t you remember? Papa went out yesterday. He has not come home yet.”

Meta drew a long face. Papa indulged her more than mamma did, especially in the matter of breakfast. Mamma was apt to say such and such a dainty was not good for Meta: papa helped her to it, whether good for her or not.

Maria put her down. “Place her at the table, Margery. It is cold this morning, is it not?” she added, as Meta was lifted on to a chair.

“Cold!” returned Margery. “Where can your feelings be, ma’am? It’s a hot summer’s day.”

Maria sat down herself to the breakfast-table. Several letters lay before her. On a Sunday morning the letters were brought into the dining-room, and Pierce was in the habit of laying them before his master’s place. To-day, he had laid them before Maria’s.

She took them up. All, except three, were addressed to the firm. Two of these bore George’s private address; the third was for Margery.

“Here is a letter for you, Margery,” she said, putting the others down, that they might be carried into the Bank.

“For me!” returned Margery in surprise. “Are you sure, ma’am?”

Maria handed her the letter, and Margery, searching her pocket for her spectacles, opened it without ceremony, and stood reading it.

“I dare say! what else wouldn’t they like!” was her ejaculatory remark.

“Is it from Scotland, Margery?” asked her mistress.

“It wouldn’t be from nowhere else,” answered Margery in vexation. “I have no other kin to pull and tug at me. They’re going on to Wales, she and her son, and she wants me to meet her on the journey to-morrow, just for an hour’s talk. Some people have consciences! Ride a matter of forty mile, and spend a sight o’ money in doing it!”

“Are you speaking of your sister—Mrs. Bray?”

“More’s the pity, I am,” answered Margery. “Selina was always one of the weak ones, ma’am. She says she has been ill again, feels likely to die, and is going to Wales for some months to his friends, to try if the air will benefit her. She’d be ever grateful for a five-pound note, she adds, not having a penny-piece beyond what will take her to her journey’s end. I wonder how much they have had from me in the whole, if it came to be put down!” wrathfully concluded Margery.

“You can have a day’s holiday, you know, Margery, if you wish to meet her on the journey.”

“I must take time to consider,” shortly answered Margery, who was always considerably put out by these applications. “She has been nothing but a trouble to me, ma’am, ever since she married that ne’er-do-well Bray. Now, Miss Meta! you be a good child, and don’t upset the whole cup of coffee over your pinafore, as you did last Sunday morning!”

The parting admonition was addressed to Meta, in conjunction with a slight shake administered to that young lady, under the pretence of resettling her on her chair. Meta was at once the idol and the torment of Margery’s life. Margery withdrew, and Maria, casting her spiritless eyes on the breakfast-table, took a modest piece of dry toast, and put a morsel into her mouth.

But she found some difficulty in swallowing it. Throat and bread were alike dry. She drew the butter towards her, thinking it might help her to eat the toast. No; no. She could not swallow it any more than the other. The fault did not lie there.

“Would Meta like a nice piece of toast?” she asked.

Meta liked anything that was good in the shape of eatables. She nodded her head several times, by way of answer. And Maria spread the toast and passed it to her.

Breakfast came to an end. Maria took the child on her knee, read her a pretty Bible story, her daily custom after breakfast, talked to her a little, and then sent her to the nursery. She, Maria, sat on alone. She heard the bells ring out for service, but they did not ring for her. Maria Godolphin could no more have shown her face in church that day, than she could have committed some desperately wrong act. Under the disgrace which had fallen upon them, it would have seemed, to her sensitive mind, something like an act of unblushing impudence. She gathered her books around her, and strove to make the best of them alone. Perhaps she had scarcely yet realized the great fact that God can be a comforter in the very darkest affliction. Maria’s experience that way was yet limited.

She had told the servants that she would dine in the middle of the day with the child, as their master was out; and at half-past one she sat down to dinner, and made what pretence she could of eating a little. Better pretence than she had made in the morning, for the servants were present now. She took the wing of a fowl on her plate, and turned it about and managed to eat part of it. Meta made up for her: the young lady partook of the fowl and other things with great relish, showing no sign that her appetite was failing, if her mamma’s was.

Later, she was despatched for a walk with Margery, and Maria was once more alone. She felt to wish to run away from herself: the house seemed too large for her. She wandered from the dining-room to her sitting-room upstairs; from the sitting-room across the vestibule to the drawing-room. She paced its large proportions, her feet sinking into the rich velvet-pile carpet; she glanced at the handsome furniture. But she saw nothing: the sense of her eyes, that day, was buried within her.

She felt indescribably lonely: she felt a sense of desertion. No one called upon her, no one came near her: even her brother Reginald had not been. People were not much in the habit of calling on her on a Sunday; but their absence seemed like neglect, in her deep sorrow. Standing for a minute at one of the windows, and looking out mechanically, she saw Isaac pass.

He looked up, discerned her standing there, and nodded. A sudden impulse prompted Maria to make a sign to him to enter. Her brain was nearly wearied out with incertitude and perplexity. All day, all night, had she been wondering how far the calamity would fall; what would be its limit, what its extent. Isaac might be able to tell her something; at present she was in complete ignorance of everything. He came up the stairs swiftly, and entered. “Alone!” he said, shaking hands with her. “How are you to-day?”

“Pretty well,” answered Maria.

“You were not at church, Maria?”

“No,” she answered. “I did not go this morning.”

A sort of constrained silence ensued. If Maria waited for Isaac to speak of yesterday’s misfortune, she waited in vain. Of all people in the world, he would be least likely to speak of it to George Godolphin’s wife. Maria must do it herself, if she wanted it done.

“Isaac, do you know whether the Bank will be open again to-morrow morning?” she began, in a low tone.

“No, I do not.”

“Do you think it will? I wish you to tell me what you think,” she added in a pointedly earnest tone.

“You should ask your husband for information, Maria. He must be far better able to give it to you than I.”

She remembered that George had told her she need not mention his having left Prior’s Ash until she saw Thomas Godolphin on Monday morning. Therefore she did not reply to Isaac that she could not ask George because he was absent. “Isaac, I wish you to tell me,” she gravely rejoined. “Anything you know, or may think.”

“I really know very little, Maria. Nothing, in fact, for certain. Prior’s Ash is saying that the Bank will not open again. The report is that some message of an unfavourable nature was telegraphed down last night by Mr. Godolphin.”

“Telegraphed to whom?” she asked eagerly.

“To Hurde. I cannot say whether there’s any foundation for it. Old Hurde’s as close as wax. No fear of his spreading it, if it has come; unless it lay in his business to do so. I walked out of church with him, but he did not say a syllable about it to me.”

Maria sat a few minutes in silence. “If the Bank should not go on, Isaac—what then?”

“Why—then, of course it would not go on,” was the very logical answer returned by Mr. Isaac.

“But what would be done, Isaac? How would it end?”

“Well—I suppose there’d be an official winding-up of affairs. Perhaps the Bank might be reopened afterwards on a smaller scale. I don’t know.”

“An official winding-up,” repeated Maria, her sweet face turned earnestly on her brother’s. “Do you mean bankruptcy?”

“Something of that sort.”

A blank pause. “In bankruptcy, everything is sold, is it not? Would these things have to be sold?”—looking round upon the costly furniture.

“Things generally are sold in such a case,” replied Isaac. “I don’t know how it would be in this.”

Evidently there was not much to be got out of Isaac. He either did not know, or he would not. Sitting a few minutes longer, he departed—afraid, possibly, how far Maria’s questions might extend. Not long had he been gone, when boisterous steps were heard leaping up the stairs, and Reginald Hastings—noisy, impetuous Reginald—came in. He threw his arms round Maria, and kissed her heartily. Maria spoke reproachfully.

“At home since yesterday morning, and not have come to see me before!” she exclaimed.

“They wouldn’t let me come yesterday,” bluntly replied Reginald. “They thought you’d be all down in the mouth with this bother, and would not care to see folks. Another thing, I was in hot water with them.”

A faint smile crossed Maria’s lips. She could not remember the time when Reginald had not come home to plunge into hot water with the ruling powers at the Rectory. “What was the matter?” she asked.

“Well, it was the old grievance about my bringing home no traps. Things do melt on a voyage somehow—and what with one outlet and another for your pay, it’s of no use trying to keep square. I left the ship, too, and came back in another. I say, where’s Meta? Gone out? I should have come here as soon as dinner was over, only Rose kept me. I am going to Grace’s to tea. How is George Godolphin? He is out, too?”

“He is well,” replied Maria, passing over the other question. “What stay shall you make at home, Reginald?”

“Not long, if I know it. There’s a fellow in London looking out for a ship for me. I thought to go up and pass for second mate, but I don’t suppose I shall now. It’s as gloomy as ditch-water this time at home. They are all regularly cut up about the business here. Will the Bank go on again, Maria?”

“I don’t know anything about it, Reginald. I wish I did know.”

“I say, Maria,” added the thoughtless fellow, lowering his voice, “there’s no truth, I suppose, in what Prior’s Ash is saying about George Godolphin?”

“What is Prior’s Ash saying?” returned Maria.

“Ugly things,” answered Reginald. “I heard something about—about swindling.”

“About swindling!”

“Swindling, or forgery, or some queer thing of that sort. I wouldn’t listen to it.”

Maria grew cold. “Tell me what you heard, Reginald—as well as you can remember,” she said, her unnatural calmness deceiving Reginald, and cloaking all too well her mental agony.

“Tales are going about that there’s something wrong with George. That he has not been doing things on the square. A bankruptcy’s not much, they say, except to the creditors; it can be got over: but if there’s anything worse—why, the question is, will he get over it?”

Maria’s heart beat on as if it would burst its bounds: her blood was fiercely coursing through her veins. A few moments of struggle, and then she spoke, still with unnatural calmness.

“It is not likely, Reginald, that such a thing could be true.”

“Of course it is not,” said Reginald, with impetuous indignation. “If I had thought it was true, I should not have asked you about it, Maria. Why, that class of people have to stand in a dock and be tried, and get imprisoned, and transported, and all the rest of it! That’s just like Prior’s Ash! If it gets hold of the story to-day that I have come home without my sea-chest, to-morrow it will be saying that I have come home without my head. George Godolphin’s a jolly good fellow, and I hope he’ll turn round on the lot. Many a time he has helped me out of a hole that I didn’t dare tell any one else of; and I wish he may come triumphantly out of this!”

Reginald talked on, but Maria heard him not. An awful fear had been aroused within her. Entire as was her trust in her husband’s honour, improbable as the uncertain accusation was, the terrible fear that something or other might be wrong took possession of her, and turned her heart to sickness.