interest."

"Sixteen hundred silent pounds, and they might have been busy, happy,
working pounds! Aw, Denas, what hours of black care the knowing of
them might have saved us. But there, then--I had forgotten. The money
be dance money and theatre money, and your father will not touch a
penny of it. I do know he will not."

"Mother, when I stopped singing--when I left the theatre for ever I
had not in my purse one half-penny. Roland gave me fifty dollars; that
came from Elizabeth--that was all I had. When it was gone, Roland was
employed by Mr. Lanhearne. I told you about him."

"Yes, dear. How then?"

"Roland's father left him pictures and silver plate and many valuable
things belonging to the Treshams, and when Roland died they were mine.
Elizabeth bought them from me. They were worth two thousand pounds;
she gave me sixteen hundred pounds."

"Why didn't you tell father and me? 'Twas cruel thoughtless of you."

"No, no! I wanted to come back to you as I left you--just Denas--without
anything but your love to ask favour from. If I had come swelling
myself like a great lady, worth sixteen hundred pounds, how all the
people would have hated me! What dreadful things they would have said!
Father would have had his hands full and his heart full to make this
one and that one keep the insult behind their lips. Oh, 'twould have
been a broad defiance to evil of every kind. I did think, too, that
father had some money in St. Merryn's Bank."

"To be sure. And so he did. But there--your aunt Helen's husband was
drowned last winter, and nothing laid by to bury him, and father had
it to do; and then there was a mortgage on the cottage, and that was
to lift, or no roof to cover Helen and her children. So with this and
that the one hundred pounds went away to forty pounds. That be for
our own burying. There be twenty pounds of yours there."

"Mine is yours!" Then rising quickly, she struck her hands sharply
together and cried out: "ONE and ALL! ONE and ALL!"[4]

And Joan answered her promptly, letting the towel fall from her grasp
to imitate the sharp smiting of the hands as with beaming face she
repeated the heart-stirring cry.

"ONE and ALL! ONE and ALL! Denas. Aw, my girl, there was a time when I
said in my anger I was sorry I gave you suck. This day I be right glad
of it! You be true blood! Cornish clean through, Denas!"

"Yes, I be true Cornish, mother, and the money I have is honest money.
Father can take it without a