ere _is_ your father!" observed Mrs Cotterill, after listening.

Footsteps crossed the hall, and died away into the dining-room.

"I wonder why on earth father doesn't come in here. He must have heard
us talking," said Nellie, like a tyrant crossed in some trifle.

A bell rang, and then the servant came into the drawing-room and
remarked: "If you please, mum," at Mrs Cotterill, and Mrs Cotterill
disappeared, closing the door after her.

"What are they up to, between them?" Nellie demanded, and she, too,
departed, with wrinkled brow, leaving Denry and Ruth together. It could
be perceived on Nellie's brow that her father was going "to catch it."

"I haven't seen Mr Cotterill yet," said Mrs Capron-Smith.

"When did you come?" Denry asked.

"Only this afternoon."

She continued to talk.

As he looked at her, listening and responding intelligently now and
then, he saw that Mrs Capron-Smith was in truth the woman that Ruth had
so cleverly imitated ten years before. The imitation had deceived him
then; he had accepted it for genuine. It would not have deceived him
now--he knew that. Oh yes! This was the real article that could hold its
own anywhere.... Switzerland! And not simply Switzerland, but a
refinement on Switzerland! Switzerland in winter! He divined that in her
opinion Switzerland in summer was not worth doing--in the way of
correctness. But in winter...

II

Nellie had announced a surprise for Denry as he entered the house, but
Nellie's surprise for Denry, startling and successful though it proved,
was as naught to the surprise which Mr Cotterill had in hand for Nellie,
her mother, Denry, the town of Bursley, and various persons up and down
the country.

Mrs Cotterill came hysterically in upon the duologue between Denry and
Ruth in the drawing-room. From the activity of her hands, which, instead
of being decently folded one over the other, were waving round her head
in the strangest way, it was clear that Mrs Cotterill was indeed under
the stress of a very unusual emotion.

"It's those creditors--at last! I knew it would be! It's all those
creditors! They won't let him alone, and now they've _done_ it."

So Mrs Cotterill! She dropped into a chair. She had no longer any sense
of shame, of what was due to her dignity. She seemed to have forgotten
that certain matters are not proper to be discussed in drawing-rooms.
She had left the room Mrs Councillor Cotterill; she returned to it
nobody in particula