“Yes, my dearest girl, I am afraid so.  But you must not be unhappy, Tita; I——­”

“Oh, unhappy!" cries the girl, in a high clear tone, one full of fresh, sweet courage and delight.  She walks straight up to Rylton. "Now I can leave you!" says she.

If she had been planning a revenge, she could hardly have arranged it better.  Rylton looks back at her.  He is silent, but she reads the disturbance of his soul in his firmly shut mouth, and the little, quick, flittering frown that draws his brows together in momentary rapidity.  He had thought many things of her, but that she should hail with rapture the ruin that seemed to give her a chance of escape from him—­that thought had not been his.

In a moment, however, he has pulled himself together.  He tells himself he sees at once the right course to pursue.  In other words, he has decided on conquering her.

“You shall certainly not do that,” says he icily.

“I shall, however.”  She almost laughs as she steps back from him, and up to Margaret.  There is an air about her as though she had snapped her pretty fingers in his face.  “Now you must help me to gain my living,” cries she gaily. “‘A child of the people’ (I quote your mother again),” smiling at Rylton, “I will go back to the people.”

“It is not quite so bad as that,” says Margaret, who has been studying the fatal letter with a view of tearing some good out of it.  “It seems that when these speculations that your uncle made with your money all failed—­and these failures have been going on for years—­that still he tried to keep up his credit with you by—­by sacrificing all his own money, and——­”

“Poor old Uncle George,” says the girl softly.  For the first time she seems sorry for the misfortune that has fallen on her house.  “Perhaps I can go to him, and help him.  I dare say, now he is down in the world, he might be a little kinder to me.”

“Impossible, Tita.  He has gone abroad,” says Margaret, who, as she tells herself miserably, is developing into a determined liar!

Uncle George, so runs the letter, has committed suicide.  Truly he has gone abroad with a vengeance, and no man knoweth whither.

Tita sighs.  It is, to tell truth, a sigh of relief.  Uncle George had not been palatable to her.

“Well, I can earn something.”

“You need not that,” says Margaret.  “It seems there is from two to three hundred a year left to you that cannot be disputed.  It should be sufficient to——­”

“I can live on half that!” cries Tita eagerly.

“You shall live with me,” says Rylton, breaking in with cold anger.  “You are my wife.  You shall not leave me.”

Tita makes a little gesture.

“Why waste time over it?” says she.  “I shall leave you as soon as ever I can.  To-morrow.  I am afraid it is too late to-night.  I should have gone any way, after what you said to me just now——­”