who had lost money and desired a higher rate of interest for funds left in the hands of the firm.  If my cousin had resisted the demand, there would have been some unpleasantness, because the money lost had been invested on his advice; he could not face this, and proceeded to speculate with other money, of which he was trustee, to fill the gap.  Good-nature, imprudence, credulousness, a faulty grasp of the conditions, and not any deliberate dishonesty, have been the cause of his ruin.  It is a fearful blow to him, but he is fortunate, perhaps, in being unmarried; I have urged him to try and get employment elsewhere, but he insists upon facing the situation in the place where he is known, with a fantastic idea, which is at the same time noble and chivalrous, of doing penance.  Of course he has no prospects whatever; but I am sure of this, that he grieves over my lost inheritance far more than he grieves over his own ruin.  His great misery is that some years ago he refused an offer from Messrs. F——­ to amalgamate the two firms.

I feared at first that I might have to sacrifice the rest of my money as well—­money slowly accumulated out of my own labours.  And the relief of finding that this will not be necessary is immense.  We must sell our house at once, and find a smaller one.  At present I am not afraid of the changed circumstances; indeed, if I could only recover my power of writing, we need not leave our home.  The temptation is to get a book written somehow, because I could make money by any stuff just now.  On the other hand, it will almost be to me a relief to part from the home so haunted with the memory of Alec—­though that will be a dreadful pain to Maud and Maggie.  As far as living more simply goes, that does not trouble me in the least.  I have always been slightly uncomfortable about the ease and luxury in which we lived.  I only wish we had lived more simply all along, so that I could have put by a little more.  I have told Maud exactly how matters stand, and she acquiesces, though I can see that, just at this time, the thought of handing over to strangers the house where we have lived all our married life, the rooms where Alec and the baby died, is a deep grief to her.  To me that is almost a relief.  I have dreaded going back there.  To-night I told Maggie, and she broke out into long weeping.  But even so there is something about the idea of being poor, strange to say, which touches a sense of romance in the child.  She does not realise the poky restrictions of the new life.

And still stranger to me is the way in which this solid, tangible trouble seems to have restored my energy and calm.  I found myself clear-headed, able to grasp the business questions which arose, gifted with a hard lucidity of mind that I did not know I possessed.  It is a relief to get one’s teeth into something, to have hard, definite occupation to distract one; indeed, it hardly seems to me in the light of a misfortune at present, so much as a blessed tangible problem to be grappled with and solved.  What I should have felt if all had been lost, and if I had had to resign my liberty, and take up some practical occupation, I hardly know.  I do not think I should even have dreaded that in my present frame of mind.