born children are of a
moment to me beyond anything you can realize or imagine, and Julia
must be their mother; Julia Royce, and no other woman in the world.

"It is in you to become so great when you are ripe that she will
worship the ground you walk upon; but you can only become as great
as that through her and through me, who have a message to deliver
to mankind here on earth, and none but you to give it a voice--not
one. But I must have my reward, and that can only come through your
marriage with Julia.

"When you have read this, Barty, go straight to Riffrath, and see
Julia if you can, and be to her as you have so often been to any
women you wished to please, and who were not worth pleasing. Her
heart is her own to give, like her fortune; she can do what she
likes with them both, and will--her mother notwithstanding, and in
the teeth of the whole world.

"Poor as you are, maimed as you are, irregularly born as you are, it
is better for her that she should be your wife than the wife of any
man living, whoever he be.

"Look at yourself in the glass, and say at once,

"'Martia, I'm off to Riffrath as soon as I've swallowed my
breakfast!'

"And then I'll go about my business with a light heart and an easy
mind.

"Martia."

Much moved and excited, Barty looked in the glass and did as he was
bid, and the north left him; and Johanna brought him his breakfast,
and he started for Riffrath.

* * * * *

All through this winter that was so happily spent by Barty in
Duesseldorf things did not go very happily in London for the Gibsons.
Mr. Gibson was not meant for business; nature intended him as a
rival to Keeley or Buckstone.

He was extravagant, and so was his wife; they were both given to
frequent and most expensive hospitalities; and he to cards, and she
to dressing herself and her daughter more beautifully than quite
became their position in life. The handsome and prosperous shop in
Cheapside--the "emporium," as he loved to call it--was not enough to
provide for all these luxuries; so he took another in Conduit
Street, and decorated it and stocked it at immense expense, and
called it the "Universal Fur Company," and himself the "Head of a
West End firm."

Then he speculated, and was not successful, and his affairs got into
tangle.