passage of weeks had but aggravated. It turned on Ovington's offer, which Arthur, pluming himself on his success and proud of his prospects, had lost no time in conveying to his mother. He had supposed that she would see the thing with his eyes, and be as highly delighted. To become a partner so early, to share at his age in the rising fortunes of the house! Surely she would believe in him now, if she had never believed in him before.
But Mrs. Bourdillon had been imbued by her husband with one fixed idea--that whatever happened she must never touch her capital; that under no circumstances must she spend it, or transfer it or alienate it. That way lay ruin. No sooner, therefore, had Arthur come to that part of his story than she had taken fright; and nothing that he had been able to say, no assurance that he had been able to give, no gilded future that he had been able to paint, had sufficed to move the good woman from her position.
"Of course," she said, looking at him piteously, for she hated to oppose him, "I'm not saying that it does not sound nice, dear."
"It is nice! Very nice!"
"But I'm older than you, and oh, dear, dear, I've known what disappointment is! I remember when your father thought that he had the promise of the Benthall living and we bought the drawing-room carpet, though it was blue and buff and your father did not like the color--something to do with a fox, I remember, though to be sure a fox is red! Well, my dear," drumming with her fingers on her lap in a placid way that maddened her listener, "he was just as confident as you are, and after all the Bishop gave the living to his own cousin, and the money thrown clean away, and the carpet too large for any room we had, and woven of one piece so that we couldn't cut it! I'm sure that was a lesson to me that there's many a slip between the cup and the lip. Believe me, a bird in the hand----"
"But this is in the hand!" Arthur cried, restraining himself with difficulty. "This is in the hand!"
"Well, I don't know how that may be. I never was a business woman, whatever your uncle may say when he is in his tantrums. But I do know that your father told me, nine or ten times----"
"And you've told me a hundred times!"
"Well, and I'm sure your uncle would say the same! But, indeed, I don't know what he wouldn't say if he knew what we were thinking of!"
"The truth is, mother, you are afraid of the Squire."
"And if I am," plaintively, "it is all very well for you, Arthur, who are away six days out of seven. But I'm here and he's here. And I have to listen to him. And if this money is lost----"
"But it cannot be lost, I tell you!"
"Well, if it is lost, we shall both be beggars! Oh, dear, dear, I'm sure if your father told me once he told me a hundred times----"
"Damn!" Arthur cried, fairly losing his temper at last. "The truth is, mother, that my father knew nothing about money."
At that, however, Mrs. Bourdillon began to cry and Arthur found himself obliged to drop the matter for the time. He saw, too, that he was on the wrong tack, and a few days later, under pressure of necessity, he tried another. He humbled himself, he wheedled, he cajoled; and when he had by this means got on the right side of his mother he spoke of Ovington's success.
"In a few years he will be worth a quarter of a million," he said.
The figure flustered her. "Why, that's----"
"A quarter of a million," he repeated impressively. "And that's why I consider this the chance of my life, mother. It is such an opportunity as I shall never have again. It is within my reach now, and surely, surely," his voice shook with the fervor of his pleading, "you will not be the one to dash it from my lips?" He laid his hand upon her wrist. "And ruin your son's life, mother?"
She was shaken. "You know, if I thought it was for your good!"
"It is! It is, mother!"
"I'd do anything to make you happy, Arthur! But I don't believe," with a sigh, "that whatever I did your uncle would pay the money."
"Is it his money or yours?"
"Why, of course, Arthur, I thought that you knew that it was your father's." She was very simple, and her pride was touched.
"And now it is yours. And I suppose that some day--I hope it will be a long day, mother--it will be mine. Believe me, you've only to write to my uncle and tell him that you have decided to call it up, and he will pay it as a matter of course. Shall I write the letter for you to sign?"
Mrs. Bourdillon looked piteously at him. She was very, very unwilling to comply, but what was she to do? Between love of him and fear of the Squire, what was she to do? Poor woman, she did not know. But he was with her, the Squire was absent, and she was about to acquiesce when a last argument occurred to her. "But you are forgetting," she said, "if your uncle takes offence, and I'm sure he will, he'll come between you and Josina."
"Well, that is his look-out."
"Arthur! You don't mean that you've changed your mind, and you so fond of her? And the girl heir to Garth and all her father's money!"
"I say nothing about it," Arthur declared. "If he chooses to come between us that will be his doing, not mine."
"But Garth!" Mrs. Bourdillon was altogether at sea. "My dear boy, you are not thinking! Why, Lord ha' mercy on us, where would you find such another, young and pretty and all, and Garth in her pocket? Why, if it were only on Jos's account you'd be mad to quarrel with him."
"I'm not going to quarrel with him," Arthur replied sullenly. "If he chooses to quarrel with me, well, she's not the only heiress in the world."
His mother held up her hands. "Oh dear me," she said wearily. "I give it up, I don't understand you. But I'm only a woman and I suppose I don't understand anything."
He was accustomed to command and she to be guided. He saw that she was wavering, and he plied her afresh, and in the end, though not without another outburst of tears, he succeeded. He fetched the pen, he smoothed the paper, and before he handed his mother her bed-candle he had got the fateful letter written, and had even by lavishing on her unusual signs of affection brought a smile to her face. "It will be all right, mother, you'll see," he urged as he watched her mount the stairs. "It will be all right! You'll see me a millionaire yet."
And then he made a mistake which was to cost him dearly. He left the letter on the mantel-shelf. An hour later, when he had been some time in bed, he heard a door open and he sat up and listened. Even then, had he acted on the instant, it might have availed. But he hesitated, arguing down his misgivings, and it was only when he caught the sound of footsteps stealthily re-ascending that he jumped out of bed and lit a candle. He slipped downstairs, but he was too late. The letter was gone.
He went up to bed again, and though he wondered at the queer ways of women he did not as yet doubt the issue. He would recover the letter in the morning and send it. The end would be the same.
There, however, he was wrong. Mrs. Bourdillon was a weak woman, but weakness has its own obstinacy, and by the morning she had reflected. The sum charged on Garth was her whole fortune, her sole support, and were it lost she would be penniless, with no one to look to except the Squire, whom she would have offended beyond forgiveness. True, Arthur laughed at the idea of loss, and he was clever. But he was young and sanguine, and before now she had heard of mothers beggared through the ill-fortune or the errors of their children. What if that should be her lot!
