“And wot you did—­”

“Oh, never mind what I did. That’s all right.”

“You did the righteous and the Christian thing.”

“Did I?  I’m sure I don’t know why I did it.”

“Ah—­if you’d done it for the love of God, there’s no doubt it’d ’ave been more pleasing to ’im.”

“Well, you know I didn’t do it for the love—­of God.”

“You did it for the love of woman?  I was right then, after all.”

Isaac felt inexpressibly consoled by Keith’s cheerful disclaimer of all credit.  His manner did away with the solemnity of the occasion; but it certainly smoothed for him the painful path of confession.

“Well, yes.  If it hadn’t been for Miss Harden I don’t suppose I should have done it at all.”

He said it very simply; but not all the magnificent consolations of religion could have given Isaac greater peace.  It was a little more even, the balance of righteousness between him and Keith.  He had never sinned, as Keith had done, after the flesh.  Of the deeds done in the body he would have but a very small account to render at the last.

“And you see, you haven’t got anything for it out of her.”

There was a certain satisfaction in his tone.  He saw a mark of the divine displeasure in Keith’s failure to marry the woman he desired.

“And if I could only raise that money—­”

He meant it—­he meant it.  The balance, held in God’s hands, hung steady now.

“How much is it?” asked Keith; for he thought, “Perhaps he’s only holding on to that share for my sake; and if he knew that I would give it up now, he might really—­”

“Four thousand nine with th’ interest,” said Isaac.

“Do you think, Keith, it would have sold for five?”

“Well, yes, I think it very possibly might.”

“Ah!” Isaac turned his face from his son.  The sigh expressed a profound, an infinite repentance.

CHAPTER LXIII

On the twenty-fifth Isaac Rickman lay dead in his villa at Ilford.  Two days after Keith’s visit he had been seized by a second and more terrible paralytic stroke; and from it he did not recover.  The wedding was now indefinitely postponed till such time as Keith could have succeeded in winding up his father’s affairs.

They proved rather less involved than he had expected.  Isaac had escaped dying insolvent.  Though a heavy mortgage delivered Rickman’s in the Strand into Pilkington’s possession, the City house was not only sound, as Isaac had said, but in a fairly flourishing condition.  Some blind but wholly salutary instinct had made him hold on to that humbler and obscurer shop where first his fortunes had been made; and with its immense patronage among the Nonconformist population Rickman’s in the City held a high and honourable position in the trade.  The bulk of the profits had to go to the bookseller’s widow as chief owner of the capital; still, the slender partnership settled on his son, if preserved intact and carefully manipulated, would yield in time a very comfortable addition to Keith’s income.  If Isaac had lived, his affairs (as far as he was concerned) would have been easily settled.  But for his son and heir they proved most seriously complicated.