hands of her maid. She lay back among the violet-velvet
cushions, languid and lovely, being disrobed, and looked round with an
irritated flush at the abrupt entrance of the master of the house. He
did not often intrude; since the first few weeks of their marriage he
had been a model husband, and kept his place. Therefore, Mrs. Fletcher
looked surprised, as well as annoyed now.

"Do you wish to speak to me, Mr. Fletcher?" she asked, coldly; for after
an evening with Capt. Craymore she was always less tolerant of her
_bourgeois_ husband.

"Yes--but alone. I will wait in your sitting-room until you dismiss your
maid."

Something in his colorless face--something in the sound of his voice
startled her; but he was gone while yet speaking, and the maid went on.
"Hurry, Louise," her mistress said, briefly; and Louise coiled up the
shining hair, arranged the white dressing-gown, and left her.

Marian Fletcher arose and swept into the next room. It was the daintiest
_bijou_ of boudoirs, all rose-silk, and silver, and filigree-work, and
delicious Greuze paintings, smiling down from the fluted panels. A
bright wood-fire burned on the hearth, and her husband stood against the
low chimney-piece, whiter and colder than the marble itself.

"Well," she said, "what is it?"

He looked up. She stood before him in her beauty and her pride, jewels
flashed on her fairy hands--a queen by right divine of her azure eyes
and tinselled hair--his, yet not his; "so near, and yet so far." He
loved her, how well his own wrung heart only knew.

"What is it?" she repeated, impatiently. "I am tired and sleepy. Tell me
in a word."

"I can--ruin!"

"What?"

"I am ruined. All is gone. I am a beggar."

She started back, turning whiter than her dress, and leaned heavily
against a chair.

"Ruined!" she repeated. "A beggar!"

"Ugly words, are they not? but quite true. I did not know it until last
night; Kearstall came from town to tell me. My last grand speculation
has failed, and in its failure engulfed everything. I am as poor as the
poorest laborer on this estate; poorer than I was five years ago, before
this fortune was left me."

There was a sort of savage pleasure in thus hideously putting things in
their ugliest light. Rich or poor, she despised him alike. What need was
there for him to mince matters?

"There are your settlements, your six hundred a-year and the Dover farm,
that crumb of the loaf is left, and remains yours. I am sorr