"I'm not sayin' you did," the girl answered back coldly. "But he went to master for your sake, because you was his friend and he had such a belief in you. Just you think that out."

With a nod of the head she was gone.

Before leaving the house she visited the kitchen, to bid good-night to Mrs Bowldler. But Mrs Bowldler was not in the kitchen.

She mounted the stairs and tapped at the door of Palmerston's attic chamber.

"Hullo!" said she looking in, "what's become of Geraldine?"

(Mrs Bowldler's Christian name was Sarah, but the two children vied in inventing others more suitable to her gentility).

"If by Geraldine you mean Herm-Intrude," said Palmerston, sitting up in bed and grinning, "she's out in the grounds, picking--"

"Culling," corrected Fancy. "Her own word."

"Well then--culling lamb mint."

"I should ha' thought sage-an'-onions was the stuffin' relied on by this establishment."

"Seasonin'," corrected Palmerston. "But what have _you_ been doin' all this time?"

"My dear, don't ask!" Fancy seated herself at the foot of the bed.

"If you _must_ know, I've been playin' Meddlesome Matty life-size. . . .

These grown-ups are all so _helpless_--the men especially! . . .

Feelin' better?"

"Heaps. 'Tis foolishness, keepin' me in bed like this, and I wish you'd tell her so. _I'm_ all right--'xcept in my mind."

"What's wrong with your mind?"

"'Shamed o' myself: that's all--but it's bad enough."

"There's no call to be ashamed. You did it in absence o' mind, and all the best authors have suffered from that. It's well known."

"To go through what I did," said Palmerston bitterly, "just to bring up two-an'-nine! 'Tis such a waste of material!"

"That's one way of puttin' it, to be sure."

"I mean, for a book--for' Pickerley.' I s'pose there's not one man in a thousand--not one liter'y man, anyhow--has suffered anything like it.

And I can't put it into the book!"

"No," agreed Fancy meditatively. "I don't suppose you could: not in 'Pickerley' anyhow. You couldn' make your 'ero swallow anything under a di'mund tiyara, and that's not easy."

"I'll have to write the next one about low life," said Palmerston.

"If only I knew a bit more about it! Mrs Bowldler says it can be rendered quite amusin', and I wouldn' mind makin' myself the 'ero."

"Wouldn't you? Well, _I_ should, and don't you let me catch you at it!

The man as I marry'll have to keep his head up and show a proper respect for his-self."

Poor Palmerston stared. The best women in the world will never understand an artist.

CHAPTER XXV.

CAI RENOUNCES.

If this thing had happened--?

After Fancy left him Cai dropped into his armchair, and sat for a long while staring at the paper ornament with which Mrs Bowldler had decorated his summer hearth. It consisted of a cascade of paper shavings with a frontage of paper roses and tinsel foliage, and was remarkable not only for its own sake but because Mrs Bowldler had chosen to display the roses upside down. But though Cai stared at it hard, he observed it not.

For some minutes his mind refused to work beyond the catastrophe.

"If _it_ had happened--if 'Bias had indeed lost all his money. . . ."

He arose, lit a pipe, and dropped back into his chair.

It may be that the tobacco clarified his brain. . . . Of a sudden the child's words recurred and wrote themselves upon it, and stood out, as if traced in fire--"_He went to master for your sake, because you was his friend and he had such a belief in you._"

Ay, that was true, and in a flash it lit up a new pathway, down which he followed the thought in the child's mind only to lose it and stand aghast at his own reflections.

''Bias went to Rogers through his belief in me.'

--'I did not encourage him. On the other hand, I said nothing to hinder him.'

--'Yet, afterwards and in practice, I did encourage him, going to Rogers with him and discussing our investments together.'

--'In a dozen investments we acted as partners.'

--'He was my friend, and in those days entirely open with me. He let me read all his character. I knew him to be strict in paying his debts, uneasy if he owed a sixpence, yet careless in details of business, and trustful as a child.'

--'Then this quarrel sprang up between us, and I let him go his way.

I had no right to do that, having led him so far. In a sense, he has gone on trusting me; that is, he has gone on trusting Rogers for my sake. To be quit of responsibility, I should have given him fair warning.

--'I ought to have gone to him and said, "Look here; Rogers is a friend of mine, and known to me from childhood. There's honesty in him, but 'tis like streaks in bacon; and for some reason or another he chooses that all his dealin's with me shall keep to the honest streak. If you ask me how I know this, 'twouldn't be easy to answer: I _do_ know it, and I trust him as I'd trust myself, a'most. But Rogers isn't a man for everyone's money, and there's many as don't scruple to call him a knave.

He hasn't known you from a child, and you haven't known him. You'll be safe in putting it that what he's done honest for you he's done as my friend--"'

Here Cai was seized by a new apprehension.

--'Ay, and--the devil take it!--I've let Rogers see, lately, that 'Bias and I had dissolved partnership and burnt the papers! 'Twouldn't take more than that to persuade Rogers he was quit of the old obligation towards 'Bias--himself in difficulties too, and 'Bias's money under his hand.'

--'Good Lord! . . . Suppose the fellow even allowed to himself that he was _helping_ me! If Mrs Bosenna--?'

At this point Cai came to a full stop, appalled. Be it repeated that neither he nor 'Bias had wooed Mrs Bosenna for her wealth; nor until now had her wealth presented itself to either save in comfortable after-thought.

Cai sat very still for a while. Then drawing quickly at his pipe, he found that it was smoked out. He arose to tap the bowl upon the bars of the grate. But they were masked and m.u.f.fled by Mrs Bowldler's screen of shavings, and he wandered to the open window to knock out the ashes upon the slate ledge. Returning to the fireplace, he reached out a hand for the tobacco-jar, but arrested it, and laying his pipe down on the table, did something clean contrary to habit.

He went to the cupboard, fetched out decanter, water-jug, and gla.s.s, and mixed himself a stiff brandy-and-water.