Sir Francis knew his man. If Bessie Day had held for him ten times her attraction an errand which had a horse for its objective would have proved more attractive still to Reginald Forcus. With hardly a pang he a.s.sented.

The young man spent a happy and profitable day at Runnydale with old Candy, a horse-dealer, much affected by the well-to-do youth of the neighbourhood, he having a racy tongue, and a fund of anecdote, and a pleasant, joking, familiar way of transferring money from their pockets to his own. He returned in time for dinner at Cashelthorpe, his brother's country-house a few miles out of Brockenham, which the younger man also made his home. The two dined alone, as was usual of late, the delicate health of Lady Forcus compelling her often to keep her room.

"You remember what I told you about Day's affairs this morning?" Sir Francis asked, looking across the table at his brother as they sat down to their soup.

Of course Reggie remembered.

"Where do you suppose Mr. William Day is spending his evening?"

Reggie paused with his spoon on its way to his mouth to say he hoped in the bosom of Mr. William Day's family.

"He is spending it in prison."

The spoon fell back into its plate, and Reggie's face grew white. "It can't be true! I'll never believe it!"

"What did you expect, after what I told you? Unless he had made a bolt of it."

"Oh, poor old fellow! But what's the poor old fellow done, then?"

"Done? Fraudulently appropriated his clients' money and adapted it to his own uses."

"Poor old Day! Oh, poor old devil!"

"Well, get your dinner, my dear boy."

"He was slapping me on the shoulder, and I was drinking his champagne, last night!"

The younger Forcus recovered sufficiently to eat the fish, but his soup had to be removed untasted. He sat, with both hands gripping his table-napkin as it lay across his knees, his eyes on the table-cloth, seeing the pretty Deleah and her fat but agile father dancing down the gay ball-room. In prison! Some one he had known, and touched hands with! Prison!

"I wonder of what the poor old fellow was thinking as he banged away at his tambourine last night!" Reggie said.

CHAPTER IV

Disaster

Shortly after Mrs. Day had left her husband sitting in his stocking-feet over the breakfast-room fire, she, in the midst of her children at their several occupations but attentive to what went on beyond, heard his heavy step in the hall, heard the front door open and close.

"Your father has gone to the club, after all," she said, and gave a sigh of relief as she worked away at her embroidery, making holes in a strip of muslin and st.i.tching round them, for the adornment of the elder daughter's petticoat. She was a timid woman, in spite of her fine and handsome appearance, with a great fear of the unusual. It was her husband's habit to go out. The thought of him sitting alone and idle in the other room had been weighing on her mind.

The children paid no attention; they were all a little tired and languid and disinclined for their usual amus.e.m.e.nts after the excitement of last night's dance and the exertion of their morning on the ice. Even Deleah, the reader of the family, neglected her book to lie back in her chair and gaze into the fire, the music of galop, and rattle of her father's tambourine humming in her ears; before her eyes figures chasing each other over the blue sheet of ice or flying rhythmically over polished boards.

Franky having temporarily deserted his paint-box and the _Ill.u.s.trated News_ he had designed to colour for many tinted sheets of gelatine, saved from the crackers on last night's supper table, now held them in turn before his eyes. "Mama, you're all red--all lovely red, like roses," or "Bessie, you're frightful--you're white as if you felt sick," he cried, accordingly as a red or a green transparency was before his eyes.

The game called "Tactics," over which Bessie and Bernard nightly quarrelled, had been so far neglected; a circ.u.mstance not to be regretted, since Bessie generally played a losing game in tears, and signalised Bernard's victory by upsetting the board and flinging the red and white ivory pegs in his face.

For, the last night's dance, which had been an engrossing topic for several weeks before it had come off, now that it was over must still be talked about.

How silly Deleah had looked when her white satin shoe had come off and shot across the slippery floor in the last waltz; and she would not stop, for all that, but finished the dance without it.

"Were your shoes too big, Deleah?"

"A little, mama. They were a pair of Bessie's last year's ones, that were too small for her."

"There you go! At me again!" Bessie cried. "Deda is proud because her foot is smaller than mine, mama. If you're a little weed of a thing like Deda, of course your feet are narrow and small. They have to be. There's no merit in it."

"And I suppose Deleah danced her silk stockings into holes?"

"No, mama! Mr. Frost, I was waltzing with, held me up most beautifully; so that after the shoe came off my feet never once touched the floor."

"Lucky it wasn't you, Bessie! It would have been the finish of poor Frost to have tried to carry such a lump as you."

"Mama, will you speak to Bernard, and ask him not to be always saying rude things about me."

"Hush, Bessie! Nonsense! Bernard, my dear, do try to be more polite to your sister."

"Mama, here's a motter I rather like in this green cracker.

"'What I most admire in you Are your eyes of lovely blue.'

"What would you have done, Deleah, if a gentleman had pulled the cracker with you? Because your eyes aren't blue; they're yellow-brown."

"I should have pa.s.sed it on to Bernard."

"And why wouldn't you have pa.s.sed it on to me, pray, miss. My eyes are as blue as Bernard's, I suppose?"

"Your eyes are green," from a Bernard ever ready for the fray.

"Mama! Mama! He's at me again! Bernard is at me again! He says my eyes are green!"

"Come, come, children! Hush, Bessie! You are too bad, Bernard. Now then, we have not yet decided who was the belle of the ball, last night."

It was while they gave their opinion on this momentous subject that Franky fell asleep over his cracker papers and was sent to bed, an hour before his time, his mother going up to hear him say his prayers, as was her nightly custom. She was crossing the hall on her return when the front door opened and the master of the house, to his wife's astonishment, reappearing, stepped in again.

"Lydia!" he whispered, and with an odd shrinking from him, she noticed that there was something furtive in his manner, and that his voice, wont to sound alarmingly through the house on his return to it, was husky and hushed. "Lydia, how much money have you in the house?"

"Money!" his wife repeated, and gazed upon him with alarm in her eyes.

"Money--I gave you a cheque for ten pounds on Monday. How much of it is left?"

Most of it had gone in expenses for the dance. "I have only about thirty shillings left, William." Without knowing why, her voice, like his, had sunk to the tone of mystery.

"Give it me, then. Quick!"

She hesitated, fearfully questioning: "Has anything--?"