Few human beings could dominate another more completely than Meshach dominated his sister.  But here, for Leonora’s undoing, was just a case where, without knowing it, Hannah influenced her brother.  He had a reputation to keep up with Hannah, a great and terrible reputation, and in several ways a loan by him through Leonora to John would have damaged it.  A few minutes later, and he would have been committed both to the loan and to the demonstration of his own consistency in the humble eyes of Hannah; but the old spinster had arrived too soon.  The spell was broken.  Meshach perceived the danger of his position, and retired.

‘Nay, nay!’ Hannah protested.  ’That’s very wrong of John.  Eh, this speculation!’

‘But, really, uncle,’ Leonora said as convincingly as she could.  ’It’s capital that John wants.’

She saw that all was lost.

‘Capital!’ Meshach sarcastically flouted the word, and he turned with a dubious benevolence to Leonora.  ‘No, my lass, it isn’t,’ he said, pausing.  ’John’ll get out of this mess as he’s gotten out of many another.  Trust him.  He’s your husband, and he’s in the family, and I’m saying nothing against him.  But trust him for that.’

‘No,’ Hannah inserted, ’John’s always been a good nephew....  If it wasn’t——­’

Meshach quelled her and proceeded:  ’I’ll none consent to John raising money on your property.  It’s not right, lass.  Happen this’ll be a lesson to him, if anything will be.’

‘Five hundred would do,’ Leonora murmured with mad foolishness.

Of what use to chronicle the dreadful shame which she endured before she could leave the house, she who for a quarter of an hour had been a queen there, and who left as the pitied wife of a wastrel nephew?

‘You’re not short, my dear?’ Hannah asked at the end in an anxious voice.

‘Not he!’ Uncle Meshach testily ejaculated, fastening the button of that droll necktie of his.

‘Oh dear no!’ said Leonora, with such dignity as she could assume.

As she walked home she wondered what ‘speculation’ really was.  She could not have defined the word.  She possessed but a vague idea of its meaning.  She had long apprehended, ignorantly and indifferently and uneasily, that John was in the habit of tampering with dangerous things called stocks and shares.  But never before had the vital import of these secret transactions been revealed to her.  The dramatic swiftness of the revelation stunned her, and yet it seemed after all that she only knew now what she had always known.

When she reached home John was already in the hall, taking off his overcoat, though the hour of one had not struck.  Was this a coincidence, or had he been unable to control his desire to learn what she had done?

In silence she smiled plaintively at him, shaking her head.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked harshly.

‘I couldn’t arrange it,’ she said.  ‘Uncle Meshach refused.’