ou nothing.'

'I don't know what I've done to make you like this.'

Her sobs and tears returned. After a moment of impatience, Tarrant went
up to her with the glass, laid a hand upon her shoulder, and kissed her.

'Now, come, be reasonable. We have uncommonly serious things to talk
about.'

'What did your friend think of me?'

'That you were one of the prettiest girls he had ever been privileged
to see, and that I was an enviable fellow to have such a visitor. There
now, another sip, and let us have some colour back into your cheeks.
There's bad news, Nancy; confoundedly bad news, dear girl. My
grandmother was dead when I got there. Well, the foolish old woman has
been muddling her affairs for a long time, speculating here and there
without taking any one's advice, and so on; and the result is that she
leaves nothing at all.'

Nancy was mute.

'Less than nothing, indeed. She owed a few hundreds that she had
no means of paying. The joke of the thing is, that she has left an
elaborate will, with legacies to half-a-dozen people, myself first of
all. If she had been so good as to die two years ago, I should have come
in for a thousand a year or so. No one suspected what was going on; she
never allowed Vawdrey, the one man who could have been useful to her,
to have an inkling of the affair. An advertising broker got her in his
clutches. Vawdrey's lawyer has been going through her papers, and finds
everything quite intelligible. The money has gone in lumps, good after
bad. Swindling, of course, but perfectly legal swindling, nothing to
be done about it. A minute or two before her death she gasped out some
words of revelation to the nurse, enough to set Vawdrey on the track,
when he was told.'

Still the listener said nothing.

'Well, I had a talk with Vawdrey. He's a blackguard, but not a bad
fellow. Wished he could help me, but didn't quite see how, unless I
would go into business. However, he had a suggestion to make.'

For Nancy, the pause was charged with apprehensions. She seemed to
discover in her husband's face a purpose which he knew would excite her
resistance.

'He and I have often talked about my friend Sutherland, in the Bahamas,
and Vawdrey has an idea that there'll be a profitable opening in that
quarter, before long. Sutherland has written to me lately that he thinks
of bestirring himself in the projects I've told you about; he has got
the old man's consent to borrow money on the property. Now Vaw