s,
as though it was a matter of course, not, indeed, knowing that it was
meanness, or blaming them in any way for that which she attributed to
them. Four gentlemen had wished to marry her during the past year. It
never occurred to her now, that any one of these four would on that
account hold out a hand to help her. In losing her money she would
have lost all that was desirable in their eyes, and this seemed to
her to be natural.

They were still walking round Lincoln's Inn Fields. "John," she
exclaimed suddenly, "I must go to them in Gower Street."

"What, now, to-day?"

"Yes, now, immediately. You need not mind me; I can get back to
Twickenham by myself. I know the trains."

"If I were you, Margaret, I would not go till all this is decided."

"It is decided, John; I know it is. And how can I leave them in such
a condition, spending money which they will never get? They must know
it some time, and the sooner the better. Mr Rubb must know it too. He
must understand that he is more than ever bound to provide them with
an income out of the business."

"I would not do it to-day if I were you."

"But I must, John; this very day. If I am not home by dinner, tell
them that I had to go to Gower Street. I shall at any rate be there
in the evening. Do not you mind coming back with me."

They were then at the gate leading into the New Square, and she
turned abruptly round, and hurried away from him up into Holborn,
passing very near to Mr Slow's chambers. John Ball did not attempt
to follow her, but stood there awhile looking after her. He felt,
in his heart, and knew by his judgment, that she was a good woman,
true, unselfish, full of love, clever too in her way, quick in
apprehension, and endowed with an admirable courage. He had heard her
spoken of at the Cedars as a poor creature who had money. Nay, he
himself had taken a part in so speaking of her. Now she had no money,
but he knew well that she was a creature the very reverse of poor.
What should he do for her? In what way should he himself behave
towards her? In the early days of his youth, before the cares of the
world had made him hard, he had married his Rachel without a penny,
and his father had laughed at him, and his mother had grieved over
him. Tough and hard, and careworn as he was now, defiled by the price
of stocks, and saturated with the poison of the money market, then
there had been in him a touch of romance and a dash of poetry, and
he had been hap