so well by
name, and regarded with such special interest. She introduced herself as
a person wishing to find a good investment for a small capital; but
the half-hour's conversation which followed became in the end almost a
confidential chat. Mrs. Damerel spoke of her nephew Horace Lord, with
whom, she understood, Mr. Crewe was on terms of intimacy; she professed
a grave solicitude on his account, related frankly the unhappy
circumstances which had estranged the young man from her, and ultimately
asked whether Crewe could not make it worth his own while to save Horace
from the shoals of idleness, and pilot him into some safe commercial
haven. This meeting was the first of many between the fashionable lady
and the keen man of affairs. Without a suspicion of how it had come
about, Horace Lord presently found himself an informal partner in
Crewe's business; he invested only a nominal sum, which might be looked
upon as a premium of apprenticeship; but there was an understanding that
at the close of the term of tutelage imposed by his father's will, he
should have the offer of a genuine partnership on very inviting terms.

Horace was not sorry to enter again upon regular occupation. He had
considerably damaged his health in the effort to live up to his ideal
of thwarted passion, and could no longer entertain a hope that Fanny's
escapade was consistent with innocence. Having learnt how money slips
through the fingers of a gentleman with fastidious tastes, he welcomed a
prospect of increased resources, and applied himself with some energy to
learning his new business. But with Mrs. Damerel he utterly refused to
be reconciled, and of his sister he saw very little. Nancy, however,
approved the step he had taken, and said she would be content to know
that all was well with him.

Upon a Sunday morning, when the church bells had ceased to clang,
Luckworth Crewe, not altogether at his ease in garb of flagrant
respectability, sat by the fireside of a pleasant little room conversing
with Mrs. Damerel. Their subject, as usual at the beginning of talk, was
Horace Lord.

'He won't speak of you at all,' said Crewe, in a voice singularly
subdued, sympathetic, respectful. 'I have done all I could, short of
telling him that I know you. He's very touchy still on that old affair.'

'How would he like it,' asked the lady, 'if you told him that we are
acquaintances?'

'Impossible to say. Perhaps it would make no difference one way or
anoth