“Do you feel inclined to tell me about your ill news?” I say, gently, going over to him, and putting my hand on his shoulder.  “I have been making so many guesses as to what it can be?”

“Have you?” he says, looking up.  “I dare say.  Well, I will tell you.  Do you remember—­I dare say you do not—­my once mentioning to you that I had some property in the West Indies—­in Antigua?”

I nod.

“To be sure I do; I recollect I had not an idea where Antigua was, and I looked out for it at once in Tou Tou’s atlas.”

“Well, a fortnight—­three weeks ago—­it was when we were in Dresden, I had a letter telling me of the death of my agent out there.  I knew nothing about him personally—­had never seen him—­but he had long been in my poor brother’s employment, and was very highly thought of by him.”

“Poor brother!” think I; “well, thank Heaven! at least he has not revived; he would not be ‘poor’ if he had,” but I say only, “Yes?” with a delicately interrogative accent.

“And to-day comes this letter”—­(pulling one out of his pocket)—­ “telling me that now that his affairs have been looked into, they are found to be in the greatest confusion—­that he has died bankrupt, in fact; and not only that, but that he has been cheating me right and left for years and years, appropriating the money which ought to have been spent on the estate to his own uses; and, as misfortunes never come single, I also hear”—­(unfolding the sheet, and glancing rather disconsolately over it)—­“that there has been a hurricane, which has destroyed nearly all the sugar-canes.”

The thought of Job and his successive misfortunes instantly occurs to me—­the Sabeans, the Chaldeans, the great wind from the wilderness—­but being a little doubtful as to his example having a very consoling effect, with some difficulty, and at the cost of a great pressure exercised on myself, I abstain from mentioning him.

“To make a long story short,” continues Sir Roger, “and not to bother you with unnecessary details—­”

“But indeed they would not bother me,” interrupt I, eagerly, putting my hand through his arm, and turning my face anxiously up to him; “I should enjoy hearing them.  I wish you would not think that all sensible, sober things bother me.”

“My dear,” he says, gently pinching my cheek, “I think nothing of the kind, but I know that not all the explanations in the world will alter the result, which is, that I shall not get a farthing from the property this year, and very likely not next either.”

“You do not say so!” cry I, trying to impart a tragic tone to my voice, and only hoping that my face looks more distressed and aghast than it feels.

To tell you the truth, I am mightily relieved.  At this period of my history, money troubles seem to me the lightest and airiest of all afflictions.  I have sat down, and Sir Roger is walking up and down, with a restlessness unlike his usual repose; on his face there is a vexed and thwarted look, that is unfamiliar to me.  The old parrot sits in the sun, outside his cage, scratching his head, and chuckling to himself.  Tou Tou’s voice comes ringing from the garden.  It has a tone of mingled laughter and pain, which tells me that she is undergoing severe and searching discipline at the hands of Bobby.