uch more
cheap and flashy work--to be even with the times, it was said, but the
old superior hands were in despair at the materials supplied to them,
and the scamped work expected. You should have heard old Thorpe
mourning for you, and moralising over the wickedness of this world.
His wife told me she really thought he would go melancholy mad if he
did not leave the factory, and he has done so. They have saved enough
to set up a nice little shop at Monks Horton.'

'I must go and see them! Good old Thorpe! I ought never to have put
those poor young things into the firm when I ceased to have any control
over it. I shall never forgive myself--'

'Nothing could seem safer then! No one could have guessed that young
Mr. Greenleaf would be so careless without his father to keep him up to
the mark, nor that Mr. Goodenough should alter so much. Is it very
bad? Is there worse behind? Speculation, I suppose--'

'Of course. I do not see to the bottom of it yet; poor George seemed
to reckon on me for an advance, but I am afraid this is more than a
mere temporary depression, such as may be tided over, and that all that
can be looked to is trying to save honourable names by an utter break
up, which may rid them of that--that--no, I won't call him a scoundrel.
I thought highly of him once, and no doubt he never realised what he
was doing.'

Before the evening was far advanced Mark Egremont knocked at the door,
and courteously asked whether Mr. Dutton could be spared to him for a
little while. Mary Nugent replied that she was just going to help Miss
Headworth to bed, and that the parlour was at their service for a
private interview, but Mark answered, 'My wife is anxious to hear. She
knows all that I do, and is quite prepared to hear whatever Mr. Dutton
may not object to saying before her.'

So they bade good-night to Mary, and went on together to the next
house, Mr. Dutton saying 'You have much to forgive me, Mr. Egremont; I
feel as if I had deserted the ship just as I had induced you to embark
in it.'

'You did not guess how ill it would be steered without you,' returned
Mark, with a sigh. 'Do not fear to speak out before my wife, even if
we are sinking. She will hear it bravely, and smile to the last.'

The room which Mr. Dutton entered was not like the cabin of a sinking
ship, nor, as in his own time, like the well-ordered apartment of a
bachelor of taste. Indeed, the house was a great puzzle to Monsieur,
who