“If it could only be made certain,” said the widow, who had fallen much from her high ideas since Margaret had last seen her. Things were greatly changed in that house since the day on which the dinner, à la Russe, had been given under the auspices of Mr Grandairs. “If it can only be made certain. They still keep his name up in the firm. There it is as plain as life over the place of business”—she would not even yet call it a shop—“Rubb and Mackenzie; and yet they won’t let me know anything as to how matters are going on. I went there the other day, and they would tell me nothing. And as for Samuel Rubb, he hasn’t been here this last fortnight, and I’ve got no one to see me righted. If you were to ask Mr Slow, wouldn’t he be able to see me righted?”

Margaret declared that she hardly knew whether that would come within Mr Slow’s line of business, and that she did not feel herself competent to give advice on such a point as that. She then explained, as best she could, that her own affairs were not as yet settled, but that she was led to hope, from what had been said to her, that the interest due by the firm on the money borrowed might become a fixed annual income for Mrs Mackenzie’s benefit.

After that it came out that Mr Maguire had again been in Gower Street.

“And he was alone, for the best part of half an hour, with that young woman downstairs,” said Mrs Mackenzie.

“And you saw him?” Margaret asked.

“Oh, yes; I saw him afterwards.”

“And what did he say?”

“He didn’t say much to me. Only he gave me to understand—at least, that is what I suppose he meant—that you and he— He meant to say, that you and he had been courting, I suppose.”

Then Margaret understood why Miss Colza had desired to know whether she had quarrelled with all the Balls. In her open and somewhat indignant speech in the drawing-room at the Cedars, she had declared before Mr Maguire, in her aunt’s presence, that she was engaged to marry her cousin, John Ball. Mr Maguire had now enlisted Miss Colza in his service, and had told Miss Colza what had occurred. But still Miss Mackenzie did not thoroughly understand the matter. Why, she asked herself, should Mr Maguire trouble himself further, now that he knew that she had no fortune? But, in truth, it was not so easy to satisfy Mr Maguire on that point, as it was to satisfy Miss Mackenzie herself. He believed that the relatives of his lady-love were robbing her, or that they were, at any rate, taking advantage of her weakness. If it might be given to him to rescue her and her fortune from them, then, in such case as that, surely he would get his reward. The reader will therefore understand why Miss Colza was anxious to know whether Miss Mackenzie had quarrelled with all the Balls.