"A lady? My sister--Miss Forcus?"

"A young lady. She didn't give her name."

"Ask it, please."

Back came the clerk with a slip of paper on which was written a name Sir Francis read to himself, and then aloud, looking questioningly upon the clerk, "Miss Deleah Day. Miss Deleah Day?"

The clerk, having no information to give or suggestion to offer, continued to look respectfully at his employer's boots.

"Show her in, please," Sir Francis said; and in a minute the door was opened and Deleah appeared.

Sir Francis, the _Brockenham Star_ depending from his left hand, bowed in his solemn fashion to the girl, and going forward turned a chair round from the writing-table, in which be indicated his desire that she should sit. How white and frightened she looked; what a young, little, extraordinary pretty thing! Full well he remembered the last occasion of her presence in his room. What had sent her to him now? What did she want?

He recalled how Reggie, whose name, it seemed to him, was always being mentioned in some undesirable connection or other, had got himself mixed up with this girl's objectionable family. Reggie, he wondered? Or was it that the mother's wretched grocery business had failed, as he had always expected it to do, and he was to be asked for another contribution towards setting her going again?

With those thoughts pa.s.sing through his mind, he went back to his old position by the fireplace, standing up stiff and straight and tall, upon the hearth, to survey his visitor from there.

"You were so kind once," Deleah said, and he heard that she had a difficulty in keeping her voice steady, and saw that her lips shook "--so very kind when I came to you before, that I have come again."

Too apprehensive of what her errand might be to say that he was glad to see her, he bowed his head in sign of courteous attention, and waited.

As she had come on her hateful errand, she had thought of how she would prepare the ground, in some way leading up to the pet.i.tion she had to make, but speech was too difficult, and she could barely deliver herself of the necessary words: "I have come to ask you to give me fifty pounds,"

she said.

Sir Francis's eyes opened largely upon her, but he did not speak. To say at once that he would give the poor child--the tool no doubt of her family, sent by them to work upon him because she was so pretty and young and appealing--fifty pounds without further explanation would be simply silly: to say that he would not did not enter his head.

She had waited for an encouraging word; none coming; painfully she laboured on: "I say 'give' because I am not sure I could ever pay you--I earn so very little money. But if I ever can pay you, you may trust me that I shall."

"I am sure you will," the rich man said, and waited for her to go on with her story. But she sat in an embarra.s.sed silence before him, her head drooping, frightened and ashamed.

"We will call it 'lent,' shall we?" presently he said. "You will feel happier so. And there will be no hurry. No hurry, at all."

"Oh thank you! I do thank you so much. I want to tell you--"

"No, no," he said and held up a hand to check the words upon her lips. It was ridiculous to give away money in such a fashion, but he had a feeling that if he knew its destination he should give it with more reluctance.

"But I must tell you, please. I wanted to tell you before, but--" Her eyes avoided his face and wandered distressedly round the room. How well she remembered it! It was here she had come to beg this man--this stranger!--to keep her father out of prison. And now her brother--now Bernard! Was there any girl in all the world so overwhelmed with shame as she! "It is my brother--" she got out. "He--I have brought his letter."

She found her pocket, and brought forth the letter which had come to her by the morning post, ravaging her heart, turning the sunshine black, making the song of the imprisoned lark opposite into a dirge, plunging her back into the woe which had been hers at the time of her father's disgrace. She drew the miserable letter from its envelope and held it to Sir Francis in trembling fingers.

"No," he said, and waved it away. "It is perhaps something that your brother would rather not have known. Something which can remain between you and him. And this--this fifty pounds"--he had gone to his writing-table, pulled a cheque-book from a drawer, was writing within it as he spoke--"this also is between you and me. No one, besides, needs ever to know a word of it."

The chair he had arranged for her to sit in was by the writing-table; he, sitting on the opposite side of it, lifted his eyes to her face without lifting his head: "You wish this made out to your brother or yourself?"

"To my brother."

"Will you tell me his name?"

"Bernard William."

She watched his strong white hand move over the paper, writing so easily the words that were of such moment to her. How the great ruby in the ring he wore on the hand which held the pen seemed to glow and burn in the sunlight. On the little finger of his other hand was a plain small circlet she knew to be from the finger of his dead wife. She noticed in the strong light from the window how the smooth black hair had grown grey about the ears, how lines which had not been there before had graved themselves in the handsome, impa.s.sive face. Was he very unhappy too, Deleah wondered, in the midst of her own trouble? Did he still mourn, as they said he had done, so heavily, for the lost wife?

He pushed the cheque across the table to her. "There!" he said.

He had caught her gaze fixed with its sorrowful questioning upon his face, and he put away from him his doubt, his annoyance, and in spite of himself smiled encouragement into her pleading, beautiful, innocently worshipping eyes.

"Do not be unhappy," he said. "This will put things right, we will hope; and set your brother on his feet again. You must not look so sad."

At the words--he had been wrong to speak so kindly--the clear hazel of her eyes was suffused with tears. The eyes were doubly beautiful so.

"'I'll not believe but Desdemona's honest'" he found himself replying to that annoying little voice which kept whispering, "Have they put her on to me?"

Deleah kept her wet eyes strained upon him, lest in lowering them the tears should overflow. "I don't know what you can think of me," she said falteringly. "I don't know how I had courage to come. I only had Bernard's letter this morning; he said--it--must be done to-day. My mother must not know: there is no one else: I had no one to ask. You had been so good to me once--I thought of you."

"I quite understand. Quite. Quite."

"I was a child then," she laboured on, forcing herself to try to express what she felt ought to be said; "and although I had no right to trouble you, to a child things may be forgiven. But now--but now--!"

"But now," he repeated, and smiled his faint smile again. To him she was but a child still, and his tone conveyed that message.

"I am very much ashamed," she said. "And so--so grateful."

She folded the cheque, put it in her cheap, little-used purse, and stood up. So humiliated she felt, she hesitated to put out her hand, lest he should think it presumptuous on her part to expect him to shake hands with her.

"Where is this brother of yours? What is he doing?" he asked.

"He is at Ingleby. Mr. George Boult put him into one of his shops in the country."

"Oh! George Boult?"

Something in tone depreciatory of the man caused Deleah to say quickly, "He has been very good to us. He helped mama about the grocer's shop; and advises her."

"So I have heard." He was thinking to himself if the unsatisfactory brother had to look for mercy for any misdoings to George Boult he would be in a sorry case.

"He is very young--my poor brother," Deleah put in. "And I suppose he has made bad friends. He never has a holiday. He can never come home to mama and us--"

"Ah, that is bad. And can't you go over to him? I am sure that you could do him good." For the thought came to him, as he looked down upon the sorrowful girl in her neat, cheap frock, standing so shyly before him, that he had never seen goodness written so legibly on the face of any human being as on that of this daughter of a thief and sister of a never-do-well.

"Railway travelling is expensive, and we are obliged to live very carefully," Deleah said. "Poor mama has made one or two bad debts lately.

And so many people, who pay in the end, are so very slow to do so." Deleah shook her head slowly and sorrowfully over these sluggards. "Also, I am occupied, of course, all day long."

"May I know in what way?"

"I teach," Deleah said, and lifted her head with a kind of pride in the avowal which was very pretty. "I am second English governess at Miss Chaplin's school for young ladies. I earn enough there to buy my own clothes and Franky's."

Her courage was coming back to her; instead of the difficulty she had experienced in dragging out the words necessary to explain and condone her errand, she now had the impulse to tell him things, to make him confidences.

"And who is Franky?"

"He is my little brother. Very much younger than the rest, and the pet with all of us. Mama says, but for Franky, she thinks she could never have survived the troubles she has had. I think we all felt that. We could not be always crying and melancholy in the company of a little boy who does not understand, and who wants so much to enjoy himself. For Franky's sake we have to be cheerful. He is only nine. Only seven when--all that--happened to papa."