‘My lass,’ he said in a tone that granted all requests in advance, after they had talked a while, ‘you’re after something.’

His wrinkled features, ironic but benevolent, intimated that he knew she wished to take an unfair advantage of the gifts which Nature had bestowed on her, and that he did not object.

She allowed herself to smile mysteriously, provocatively at him.

‘Yes,’ she admitted frankly, ‘I am.’

‘Well?’ He waited indulgently for the disclosure.

She paused a moment, smiling steadily at him.  The contrast of his wizened age made her feel deliciously girlish.

‘It’s about my house, at Hillport,’ she began with assurance.  ’I want you——­’

And she told him, with no more than a sufficiency of detail, what she wanted.  She did not try to conceal that the aim was to help John, that, in crude fact, it was John who needed the money.  But she emphasised ‘my house,’ and ‘I want you to lend me.’  The thing was well done, and she knew it was well done, and felt satisfied accordingly.  As for Meshach, he was decidedly caught unawares.  He might, perhaps, have suspected from the beginning that she was only an emissary of John’s, but the form and magnitude of her proposal were a violent surprise to him.  He hesitated.  She could see clearly that he sought reasons by which to justify himself in acquiescence.

‘It’s your affair?’ he questioned meditatively.

‘Quite my own,’ she assured him.

‘Let me see——­’

‘I shall get it!’ she said to herself, and she was astounded at the felicitous event of the enterprise.  She could scarcely believe her good luck, but she knew beyond any doubt that she was not mistaken in the signs of Meshach’s demeanour.  She thought she might even venture to ask him for an explanation of his warning letter about Arthur Twemlow.

At that moment Aunt Hannah and the middle-aged servant re-entered the house, and the servant had to pass through the parlour to reach the kitchen.  The atmosphere which Meshach and Leonora had evolved in solitude from their respective individualities was dissipated instantly.  The parlour became nothing but the parlour, with its glass partition, its antimacassars, its Meshach by the hob, and its diminutive Hannah uttering fatuous, affectionate exclamations of pleasure.

Leonora’s heart was pierced by a sudden stab of doubt, as she waited for the result.

‘Sister,’ said Meshach, ’what dost think?  Here’s your nephew been speculating in stocks and shares till he can’t hardly turn round——­’

‘Uncle!’ Leonora exclaimed horrified, ‘I never said such a thing!’

‘Sh!’ said Hannah in an awful whisper, as she shut the kitchen door.

‘Till he can’t hardly turn round,’ Meshach continued; ’and now he wants Leonora here to mortgage her house to get him out of his difficulties.  Haven’t I always told you as John would find himself in a rare fix one of these days?’