entered by invitation, knowing his way perfectly, thinking himself
at home after all his travels, and then missing his own particular mat,
and sniffing round at the furniture. It was of the modified aesthetic
date, but arranged more with a view to comfort than anything else, and
by the light of the shaded lamp and bright fire was pre-eminently
home-like, with the three chairs placed round the hearth, and
bright-haired Annaple rising up from the lowest with her knitting to
greet Mr. Dutton, and find a comfortable lair for Monsieur.

'Miss Nugent says that you set everything right that you do but look
at, Mr. Dutton,' she said; 'so we are prepared to receive you as a good
genius to help us out of our tangle.'

Mr. Dutton was afraid that the tangle was far past unwinding, and of
course the details, so far as yet known, were discussed. There was, in
truth, nothing for which Mark could be blamed. He had diligently
attended to his office-work, which was mere routine, and, conscious of
his own inexperience, and trusting to the senior partners, he had only
become anxious at the end of the year, when he perceived Goodenough's
avoidance of a settlement of accounts, and detected shuffling. He had
not understood enough of the previous business to be aware of the
deterioration of the manner of dealing with it, though he did think it
scarcely what he expected. If he had erred, it was in acting too much
as a wheel in the machinery, keeping his thoughts and heart in his own
happy little home, and not throwing himself into the spirit of the
business, or the ways of those concerned in it, so that he had been in
no degree a controlling power. He had allowed his quality of gentleman
to keep him an outsider, instead of using it to raise the general level
of the transactions, so that the whole had gone down in the hands of
the unscrupulous Goodenough.

Annaple listened and knitted quietly while the affairs were explained
on either hand. Mark had had one serious talk with George Greenleaf,
and both had had a stormy scene with Goodenough. Then Mr. Dutton had
telegraphed his arrival, and Greenleaf had met him in London, with
hopes, bred of long and implicit trust, that his sagacity and perhaps
his wealth would carry the old house through the crisis.

But Mr. Dutton, though reserving his judgment till the books should
have been thoroughly examined and the liabilities completely
understood, was evidently inclined to believe that thing