‘Oh, Louis!’ cried Mary, almost sobbing, ’this will not do.  I cannot entangle you in our ruinous affairs.’

‘Insufficient objections are consent,’ said Louis, smiling.  ’Do you trust me, Mary?’

‘It is of no use to ask.’

’You think I am not to be trusted with affairs that have become my own!  I believe I am, Mary.  You know I must do my utmost for the Dynevors; and I assure you I see my way.  I have no reasonable doubt of clearing off all future liabilities.  You mean to let me arrange?’

‘Yes, but—­’

‘Then why not obviate all awkward situations at once?’

‘My father!  You should not ask it, Louis.’

’I would not hasten you, but for the sake of my own father, Mary.  He is growing old, and I could not have left him for anything but the hope of bringing him his own chosen daughter.  I want you to help me take care of him, and we must not leave him alone to the long evenings and cold winds.’

Mary was yielding—­’I must not keep you from him,’ she said, ’but to-morrow—­a Sunday, too—­’

’Ah!  Mary, do you want gaiety!  No, if we cannot have it in a holy place, let it at least have the consecration of the day—­let us have fifty-two wedding days a year instead of one.  Indeed, I would not press you, but that I could take care of you so much better, and it is not as if our acquaintance had not begun—­how long ago—­twenty-seven years, I think?’

‘Settle it as you like,’ she managed to say, with a great flood of tears-but what soft bright tears!  ‘I trust you.’

He saw she wanted solitude; he only stayed for a few words of earnest thanks, and the assurance that secrecy and quietness would be best assured by speed.  ‘I will come back,’ he said, ’when I have seen to the arrangement.  And there is one thing I must do first, one poor fellow who must not be left in suspense any longer.’

Tired as he ought to have been, he lightly crossed the sala to the room appropriated to business, where he had desired the two clerks to wait for him, and where Tom Madison stood against the wall, with folded arms, while Ford lounged in a disengaged attitude on a chair, but rose alert and respectful at his appearance.

Louis asked one or two necessary questions on the custody of the office for the night and ensuing day, and Ford made repeated assurances that nothing would be found missing that had been left in his charge.  ‘I believe you, Mr. Delaford,’ said Fitzjocelyn, quietly.  ’I do not think the lower species of fraud was ever in your style.’

Delaford tried to open his lips, but visibly shook.  Louis answered, what he had not yet said, ’I do not intend to expose you.  I think you had what excuse neglect can give, and unless I should be called on conscientiously to speak to your character, I shall leave you to make a new one.’

Delaford began to stammer out thanks, and promises of explaining the whole of Robson’s peculations (little he knew the whole of them).