“I dare not do it – I simply dare not do it!”

“Why tell him it’s a bill at all?” asked Gilder. “You can get him by himself, spin a yarn – you have a fertile imagination – but I suggest to you that you tell him you need his signature to release some of your sister’s property, and once his name is on the back of the bill–”

Arthur Gine looked up sharply. Was it a coincidence that this excuse should be suggested? There was nothing in the head clerk’s face to suggest otherwise.

“But when it comes due?” he asked irresolutely, as he turned the document over and over in his hands.

“In six months’ time he’ll be married, and if things aren’t better with you, he’ll either have to meet the bill or hush the matter up.”

The eyes of the two men met.

“You’re on the edge of ruin, my young friend,” said Gilder, “and I’m rather concerned. If you go down, my livelihood disappears.”

How true this was, Arthur learnt one bitter day.

“You make a deuced sight more out of it than I do,” he grumbled, as he wrote the name of a bank across the face of the bill.

“I spend less than you, and when I get money I know how to keep it.”

“You might even raise the sum yourself,” said his employer, with a feeble attempt at jocularity.

“I might,” said Gilder grimly, “but, as I said before, I know how to take care of my own, and lending money to you is not my notion of a good investment.”

He had been out of the room only a few minutes when he came back and, closing the door carefully behind him: “Do you know a Miss Wenner?” he asked.

Mr Gine frowned.

“Yes. What does she want?”

“She says she must see you on an urgent personal matter. Is she one of your – friends?”

Arthur shook his head.

“N-no – I have met her. She was Chelford’s secretary. Can’t you find out what she wants?”

“I’ve tried, but it is a matter personal to you. Do you want to see her? – I can easily stall her.”

Arthur thought for a while. She might have something important to tell him.

“Ask her to come in,” he said.

A few minutes later Mary Wenner came into the room and greeted him with a familiar nod.

“Well, my dear, this is an unexpected pleasure. You are getting prettier every time I see you.”

She accepted the flattery as her right, and sat on the edge of his desk.

“I’ve been down to Fossaway, Arthur,” she said.

“Silly girl,” he smiled. “But I thought that affair was all over and done with. You’ve got to be good, Mary. Chelford is going to marry my sister.”

“Isn’t that grand! And I’m not surprised. I saw you working when I was at Fossaway.”