in earnest, and Dalrymple had to console her as best he might. "How
I wish I had known you first," she said. To this Dalrymple was able
to make no direct answer. He was wise enough to know that a direct
answer might possibly lead him into terrible trouble. He was by no
means anxious to find himself "protecting" Mrs. Dobbs Broughton from
the ruin which her husband had brought upon her.

Before he left her she had told him a long story, partly of matters
of which he had known something before, and partly made up of that
which she had heard from the old woman. It was settled, Mrs. Broughton
said, that Mr. Musselboro was to marry Clara Van Siever. But it
appeared, as far as Dalrymple could learn, that this was a settlement
made simply between Mrs. Van Siever and Musselboro. Clara, as he
thought, was not a girl likely to fall into such a settlement without
having an opinion of her own. Musselboro was to have the business,
and Dobbs Broughton was to be "sold up", and then look for employment
in the City. From her husband the wife had not heard a word on the
matter, and the above story was simply what had been told to Mrs
Broughton by Mrs. Van Siever. "For myself it seems that there can be
but one fate," said Mrs. Broughton. Dalrymple, in his tenderest voice,
asked what that one fate must be. "Never mind," said Mrs. Broughton.
"There are some things which one cannot tell even to such a friend as
you." He was sitting near her and had all but got his arm behind her
waist. He was, however, able to be prudent. "Maria," he said, getting
up on his feet, "if it should really come about that you should want
anything, you will send to me. You will promise me that, at any
rate?" She rubbed a tear from her eye and said that she did not know.
"There are moments in which a man must speak plainly," said Conway
Dalrymple;--"in which it would be unmanly not to do so, however
prosaic it may seem. I need hardly tell you that my purse shall be
yours if you want it." But just at that moment she did not want his
purse, nor must it be supposed that she wanted to run away with him
and to leave her husband to fight the battle alone with Mrs. Van
Siever. The truth was that she did not know what she wanted, over
and beyond an assurance from Conway Dalrymple that she was the most
ill-used, the most interesting, and the most beautiful woman ever
heard of, either in history or romance. Had he proposed to her to
pack up a bundle and go off with him in a c