all the purchase-money, while he only gave me half, and said the rest was to come afterward.  And the ungrateful scoundrel has gone and given a forged receipt!  You might have knocked me down with a straw when Mr. Henry told me about it all last night.  ‘Never talk to me of virtue and such humbug again,’ I said, ’I’ll never believe in them.  Every one is for what he can get.’  However, Mr. Henry wrote to the superintendent of police at Woodchester; and has gone over himself this morning to see after it.  But to think of your father having such a son!”

“Oh my poor father!” sobbed out Maggie.  “How glad I am you are dead before this disgrace came upon us!”

“You may well say disgrace.  You’re a good girl yourself, Maggie.  I have always said that.  How Edward has turned out as he has done, I cannot conceive.  But now, Maggie, I’ve something to say to you.”  He moved uneasily about, as if he did not know how to begin.  Maggie was standing leaning her head against the chimney-piece, longing for her visitor to go, dreading the next minute, and wishing to shrink into some dark corner of oblivion where she might forget all for a time, till she regained a small portion of the bodily strength that had been sorely tried of late.  Mr. Buxton saw her white look of anguish, and read it in part, but not wholly.  He was too intent on what he was going to say.

“I’ve been lying awake all night, thinking.  You see the disgrace it is to you, though you are innocent; and I’m sure you can’t think of involving Frank in it.”

Maggie went to the little sofa, and, kneeling down by it, hid her face in the cushions.  He did not go on, for he thought she was not listening to him.  At last he said: 

“Come now, be a sensible girl, and face it out.  I’ve a plan to propose.”

“I hear,” said she, in a dull veiled voice.

“Why, you know how against this engagement I have always been.  Frank is but three-and-twenty, and does not know his own mind, as I tell him.  Besides, he might marry any one he chose.”

“He has chosen me,” murmured Maggie.

“Of course, of course.  But you’ll not think of keeping him to it, after what has passed.  You would not have such a fine fellow as Frank pointed at as the brother-in-law of a forger, would you?  It was far from what I wished for him before; but now!  Why you’re glad your father is dead, rather than he should have lived to see this day; and rightly too, I think.  And you’ll not go and disgrace Frank.  From what Mr. Henry hears, Edward has been a discredit to you in many ways.  Mr. Henry was at Woodchester yesterday, and he says if Edward has been fairly entered as an attorney, his name may be struck off the Rolls for many a thing he has done.  Think of my Frank having his bright name tarnished by any connection with such a man!  Mr. Henry says, even in a court of law what has come out about Edward would be excuse enough for a breach of promise of marriage.”