“Mr Slow will give up at once, I suppose, if I ask him?”

“I don’t want you to ask him. I would rather that you didn’t say a word to him about it. There is a debt too from that man Rubb which they advise me to abandon.”

In answer to this, Margaret could say nothing, for she knew well that her trust in the interest of that money was the only hope she had of any maintenance for her sister-in-law.

After a few minutes’ silence he again spoke to her. “He desires to know whether you want money for immediate use.”

“Who wants to know?”

“Mr Slow.”

“Oh no, John. I have money at the bankers’, but I will not touch it.”

“How much is there at the bankers?”

“There is more than three hundred pounds; but very little more; perhaps three hundred and ten.”

“You may have that.”

“John, I don’t want anything that is not my own; not though I had to walk out to earn my bread in the streets to-morrow.”

“That is your own, I tell you. The tenants have been ordered not to pay any further rents, till they receive notice. You can make them pay, nevertheless, if you wish it; at least, you might do so, till some legal steps were taken.”

“Of course, I shall do nothing of the kind. It was Mr Slow’s people who used to get the money. And am I not to go up to London to-morrow?”

“You can go if you choose, but you will learn nothing. I told Mr Slow that I would bid you wait till I heard from him again. It is time now for us to get ready for dinner.”

Then, as he was going to leave the room, she took him by the coat and held him again,—held him as fast as she had done on the pavement in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. There was a soft, womanly, trusting weakness in the manner of her motion as she did this, which touched him now as it had touched him then.

“John,” she said, “if there is to be so much delay, I must not stay here.”

“Why not, Margaret?”

“My aunt does not like my staying; I can see that; and I don’t think it is fair to do so while she does not know all about it. It is something like cheating her out of the use of the house.”

“Then I will tell her.”

“What, all? Had I not better go first?”

“No; you cannot go. Where are you to go to? I will tell her everything to-night. I had almost made up my mind to do so already. It will be better that they should both know it,—my father and my mother. My father probably will be required to say all that he knows about the matter.”

“I shall be ready to go at once if she wishes it,” said Margaret.