’How am I to know?  She says so, and she says it is because he drinks.  He does drink.  That at least is true; but how can I help it?  Oh, Conway, what am I to do?  Dobbs did not come home at all last night, but sent for his things—­saying that he must stay in the City.  What am I to do if they come and take the house, and sell the furniture, and turn me out into the street?’ Then the poor creature began to cry in earnest, and Dalrymple had to console her as best he might.  ’How I wish I had known you first,’ she said.  To this Dalrymple was able to make no direct answer.  He was wise enough to know that a direct answer might possible lead him into terrible trouble.  He was by no means anxious to find himself ‘protecting’ Mrs Dobbs Broughton from the ruin which her husband had brought upon her.

Before he left her she had told him a long story, partly of matters of which he had known something before, and partly made up of that which she had heard from the old woman.  It was settled, Mrs Broughton said, that Mr Musselboro was to marry Clara Van Siever.  But it appeared, as far as Dalrymple could learn, that this was a settlement made simply between Mrs Van Siever and Musselboro.  Clara, as he thought, was not a girl likely to fall into such a settlement without having an opinion of her own.  Musselboro was to have the business, and Dobbs Broughton was to be ‘sold up’ and then look for employment in the City.  From her husband the wife had not heard a word on the matter, and the above story was simply what had been told to Mrs Broughton by Mrs Van Siever.  ’For myself it seems that there can be but one fate,’ said Mrs Broughton.  Dalrymple, in his tenderest voice, asked what that one fate must be.  ‘Never mind,’ said Mrs Broughton.  ’There are some things which one cannot tell even to such a friend as you.’  He was sitting near her and had all but got his arm behind her waist.  He was, however, able to be prudent.  ‘Maria,’ he said, getting up on his feet, ’if it should really come about that you should want anything, you will send to me.  You will promise me that, at any rate?’ She rubbed a tear from her eye and said that she did not know.  ’There are moments in which a man must speak plainly,’ said Conway Dalrymple;—­’in which it would be unmanly not to do so, however prosaic it may seem.  I need hardly tell you that my purse shall be yours if you want it.’  But just at that moment she did not want his purse, nor must it be supposed that she wanted to run away with him and to leave her husband to fight the battle with Mrs Van Siever.  The truth was that she did not know what she wanted, over and beyond an assurance from Conway Dalrymple that she was the most ill-used, the most interesting, and the most beautiful woman ever heard of, either in history or romance.  Had he proposed to her to pack up a bundle and go off with him in a cab to the London Chatham, and Dover railway station, I do not for a moment think that she would have packed up her bundle.  She would have received