’You see, Mrs Van, he had the start of me so much.  And then being at the West End, and all that, gives a man such a standing with a girl.’

‘Bother!’ said Mrs Van Siever, as he quick ear caught the sound of the closing hall-door.  Clara had stood a minute or two to consider, and then had resolved that she would disobey her mother.  She tried to excuse her own conduct to her own satisfaction as she went.  ’There are some things,’ she said, ’which even a daughter cannot hear from her mother.  If she chooses to close the door against me, she must do so.’

She found Mrs Broughton still in bed, and could not but agree with her mother that the woman was both silly and heartless.

‘Your mother says that everything must be sold up,’ said Mrs Broughton.

‘At any rate you would hardly choose to remain here,’ said Clara.

’But I hope she will let me have my own things.  A great many of them are altogether my own.  I know there’s a law that a woman may have her own things, even though her husband has—­done what poor Dobbs did.  And I think she was hard upon me about the mourning.  They never do mind giving credit for such things as that, and though there is a bill due to Mrs Morell now, she has had a deal of Dobbs’s money.’  Clara promised her that she would have mourning to her heart’s content.  ’I will see to that myself,’ she said.

Presently there was a knock at the door, and the discreet head-servant beckoned Clara out of the room.  ‘You are not going away,’ said Mrs Broughton.  Clara promised her that she would not go without coming back again.  ’He will be here soon, I suppose, and perhaps you had better see him; though, for the matter of that, perhaps you had better not, because he is so much cut up about poor Dobbs.’  The servant had come to tell Clara that the ‘he’ in question was at the present moment waiting for her below stairs.

The first words which passed between Dalrymple and Clara had reference to the widow.  He told her what he had learned in the City—­that Broughton’s property had never been great, and that his personal liabilities at the time of his death were supposed to be small.  But he had fallen lately altogether into the hands of Musselboro, who, though penniless himself in the way of capital, was backed by the money of Mrs Van Siever.  There was not doubt that Broughton had destroyed himself in the manner told by Musselboro, but the opinion in the City was that he had done so rather through the effects of drink than because of his losses.  As to the widow, Dalrymple thought that Mrs Van Siever, or nominally, perhaps, Musselboro, might be induced to settle an annuity on her, or she would give up everything quietly.  ’Doubt whether your mother is not responsible for everything that Broughton owed when he died—­for everything, that is, in the way of business; and if so, Mrs Broughton will certainly have a claim on the estate.’  It occurred to Dalrymple once or twice that he was talking to Clara about Mrs Van Siever as though he and Clara were more closely bound together than were Clara and her mother; but Clara seemed to take this in good part, and was as solicitous as was he himself in the manner of Mrs Broughton’s interest.