n.o.body has noticed that anything is wrong. Only Doatie turns very pale, and glances nervously at Geoffrey, who answers her frightened look with a perplexed one of his own.

Then, as breakfast was virtually over before the letters came, they all rise, and disperse themselves as fancy dictates. But Geoffrey goes alone to where he knows he shall find Nicholas in his own den.

An hour later, coming out of it again, feeling hara.s.sed and anxious, he finds Dorothy walking restlessly up and down the corridor outside, as though listening for some sound she pines to hear. Her pretty face, usually so bright and _debonnaire_, is pale and sad. Her lips are trembling.

"May I not see Nicholas, if only for a moment?" she says, plaintively, gazing with entreaty at Geoffrey. At which Nicholas, hearing from within the voice that rings its changes on his heart from morn till eve, calls aloud to her,--

"Come in, Dorothy. I want to speak to you."

So she goes in, and Geoffrey, closing the door behind her, leaves them together.

She would have gone to him then, and tried to console him in her own pretty fashion, but he motions her to stay where she is.

"Do not come any nearer," he says, hastily, "I can tell it all to you better, more easily, when I cannot see you."

So Doatie, nervous and miserable, and with unshed tears in her eyes, stands where he tells her, with her hand resting on the back of an arm-chair, while he, going over to the window, deliberately turns his face from hers. Yet even now he seems to find a difficulty in beginning.

There is a long pause; and then----

"They--they have found that fellow,--old Elspeth's nephew," he says in a husky tone.

"Where?" asks Doatie, eagerly.

"In Sydney. In Paul Rodney's employ. In his very house."

"Ah!" says Doatie, clasping her hands. "And----"

"He says he knows nothing about any will."

Another pause, longer than the last.

"He denies all knowledge of it. I suppose he has been bought up by the other side. And now what remains for us to do? That was our last chance, and a splendid one, as there are many reasons for believing that old Elspeth either burned or hid the will drawn up by my grandfather on the night of his death; but it has failed us. Yet I cannot but think this man Warden must know something of it. How did he discover Paul Rodney's home? It has been proved, that old Elspeth was always in communication with my uncle up to the hour of her death; she must have sent Warden to Australia then, probably with this very will she had been so carefully hiding for years. If so, it is beyond all doubt burned or otherwise destroyed by this time. Parkins writes to me in despair."

"This is dreadful!" says Doatie. "But"--brightening--"surely it is not so bad as death or disgrace, is it?"

"It means death to me," replies he, in a low tone. "It means that I shall lose you."

"Nicholas," cries she, a little sharply, "what is it you would say?"

"Nay, hear me," exclaims he, turning for the first time to comfort her; and, as he does, she notices the ravages that the last hour of anxiety and trouble have wrought upon his face. He is looking thin and haggard, and rather tired. All her heart goes out to him, and it is with difficulty she restrains her desire to run to him and encircle him with her soft arms. But something in his expression prevents her.

"Hear me," he says, pa.s.sionately: "if I am worsted in this fight--and I see no ray of hope anywhere--I am a ruined man. I shall then have literally only five hundred a year that I can call my own. No home; no t.i.tle. And such an income as that, to people bred as you and I have been, means simply penury. All must be at an end between us, Dorothy. We must try to forget that we have ever been more than ordinary friends."

This tirade has hardly the effect upon Dorothy that might be desired.

She still stands firm, utterly unshaken by the storm that has just swept over her (frail child though she is), and, except for a slight touch of indignation that is fast growing within her eyes, appears unmoved.

"You may try just as hard as ever you like," she says, with dignity: "I _sha'n't_!"

"So you think now; but by and by you will find the pressure too great, and you will go with the tide. If I were to work for years and years, I could scarcely at the end achieve a position fit to offer you. And I am thirty-two, remember,--not a boy beginning life, with all the world and time before him,--and you are only twenty. By what right should I sacrifice your youth, your prospects? Some other man, some one more fortunate, may perhaps----"

Here he breaks down ignominiously, considering the amount of sternness he had summoned to his aid when commencing, and, walking to the mantelpiece, lays his arm on it, and his head upon his arms.

"You insult me," says Dorothy, growing even whiter than she was before, "when you speak to me of--of----"

Then she, too, breaks down, and, going to him, deliberately lifts one of his arms and lays it round her neck; after which she places both hers gently round his, and so, having comfortably arranged herself, proceeds to indulge in a hearty burst of tears. This is, without exception, the very wisest course she could have taken, as it frightens the life out of Nicholas, and brings him to a more proper frame of mind in no time.

"Oh, Dorothy, don't do that! Don't, my dearest, my pet!" he entreats. "I won't say another word, not one, if you will only stop."

"You have said too much already, and there _sha'n't_ be an end of it, as you declared just now," protests Doatie, vehemently, who declines to be comforted just yet, and is perhaps finding some sorrowful enjoyment in the situation. "I'll take very good care there sha'n't! And I won't let you give me up. I don't care how poor you are. And I must say I think it is very rude and heartless of you, Nicholas, to want to hand me over to 'some other man,' as if I was a book or a parcel! 'Some other man,'

indeed!" winds up Miss Darling, with a final sob and a heavy increase of righteous wrath.

"But what is to be done?" asks Nicholas, distractedly, though inexpressibly cheered by these professions of loyalty and devotion.

"Your people won't hear of it."

"Oh, yes, they will," returns Doatie, emphatically, "They will probably hear a great deal of it! I shall speak of it morning, noon, and night, until out of sheer vexation of spirit they will come in a body and entreat you to remove me. Ah!" regretfully, "if only I had a fortune now, how sweet it would be! I never missed it before. We are really very unfortunate."

"We are, indeed. But I think your having a fortune would only make matters worse." Then he grows despairing once more. "Dorothy, it is madness to think of it. I am speaking only wisdom, though you are angry with me for it. Why encourage hope where there is none?"

"Because 'the miserable hath no other medicine but only hope,'" quotes she, very sadly.

"Yet what does Feltham say? 'He that hopes too much shall deceive himself at last' Your medicine is dangerous, darling. It will kill you in the end. Just think, Dorothy, how could you live on five hundred a year!"

"Other people have done it,--do it every day," says Dorothy, stoutly.

She has dried her eyes, and is looking almost as pretty as ever. "We might find a dear nice little house somewhere, Nicholas," this rather vaguely, "might we not? with some furniture in Queen Anne's style. Queen Anne, or what looks like her, is not so very expensive now, is she?"

"No," says Nicholas, "she isn't; though I should consider her dear at any price." He is a depraved young man who declines to see beauty in ebony and gloom. "But," with a sigh, "I don't think you quite understand, darling."

"Oh, yes, I do," says Dorothy, with a wise shake of her blonde head; "you mean that probably we shall not be able to order any furniture at all. Well, even if it comes to sitting on one horrid kitchen deal chair with you, Nicholas, I sha'n't mind it a sc.r.a.p." She smiles divinely, and with the utmost cheerfulness, as she says this. But then she has never tried to sit on a deal chair, and it is a simple matter to conjure up a smile when woes are imaginary.

"You are an angel," says Nicholas. And, indeed, considering all things, it is the least he could have said. "If we weather this storm, Dorothy,"

he goes on, earnestly,--"if, by any chance, Fate should reinstate me once more firmly in the position I have always held,--it shall be my proudest remembrance that in my adversity you were faithful to me, and were content to share my fortune, evil though it showed itself to be."

They are both silent for a little while, and then Dorothy says, softly,--

"Perhaps it will all come right at last. Oh! if some kind good fairy would but come to our aid and help us to confound our enemies!"

"I am afraid there is only one fairy on earth just now, and that is you," says Nicholas, with a faint smile, smoothing back her pretty hair with loving fingers, and gazing fondly into the blue eyes that have grown so big and earnest during their discussion.

"I mean a real fairy," says Dorothy, shaking her head "If she were to come now this moment and say, 'Dorothy'----"

"Dorothy," says a voice outside at this very instant, so exactly as Doatie pauses that both she and Nicholas start simultaneously.

"That is Mona's voice," says Doatie. "I must go. Finish your letters, and come for me then, and we can go into the garden and talk it all over again. Come in, Mona; I am here."

She opens the door, and runs almost into Mona's arms, who is evidently searching for her everywhere.

"Ah! now, I have disturbed you," says Mrs. Geoffrey, pathetically, to whom lovers are a rare delight and a sacred study. "How stupid of me!

Sure you needn't have come out, when you knew it was only me. And of course he wants you, poor dear fellow. I thought you were in the small drawing-room, or I shouldn't have called you at all."

"It doesn't matter. Come upstairs with me, Mona. I want to tell you all about it," says Doatie. The reaction has set in, and she is again tearful, and reduced almost to despair.