her from friends or foes; but in Adelaide
she was unknown except from her connection with Peck, which did not
inspire confidence.

This Adelaide gentleman had just come from London, and could know
nothing about her, so she was determined to use her plausible tongue,
and get the money out of him.

As Mr. Phillips said, she was possessed with the spirit of falsehood.
She always had a disinclination to speak the truth, unless when it was
very decidedly for her own interest to do so, or when she was enraged
out of all prudence. So now, when she wanted to get an advance from Mr.
Dempster, she forgot the agitation and the eagerness which she had
shown about the Phillipses, the Melvilles, and the Hogarths, and opened
up a quite new mine of anxieties and fears. Her secret, such as it was,
should not be told to any one but the parties to whom it was valuable,
and who would pay her handsomely for it, so she must now prevent this
friend of the family from even guessing at what her schemes were.

Chapter III.

Raising The Wind

As Mrs. Peck sipped her brandy-and-water, putting a constraint on
herself in so doing--for her natural taste would have led her to
swallow it in large gulps, but that would not have answered her purpose
of impressing Mr. Dempster--she began to talk of the letter she had
received from Melbourne, which had distressed her so much. Her daughter
was ill and dying, and her son-in-law had written to her to beg that if
she possibly could she would come across to see poor dear Mary before
she was no more; but, poor fellow, he was always hard up--a decent
well-meaning fellow he was--but he wanted push, and things had never
gone rightly with him.

"They have never had the doctor out of the house since they have been
married, and many births and many deaths keep a man always poor, Mr.
Dempster, as well you must know; and it's many's the five-pound note as
I've given to them out of my small means to help them through at a hard
pinch, and he thinks, of course, as how I can just put my hand in my
pocket and pay my passage in the first steamer as quick as he thinks
for to ask me; and so I would, and would never have begrudged it, for
my poor Mary's sake, but things has gone so contrary with me and Peck
for this year back that I ain't got a penny to lay out. And there's the
poor soul laying so bad, and thinking as I'm on the road, I dare say,
and me can no more get to her without wings nor she can to get me."