must be mad! It must be the hot sun in that awful country. Not Jack——!

But to suggest that I should turn to Sydney Vandeleur for the money, even supposing that I knew where the Vandeleurs were to be found just now—oh! As if I wouldn’t rather die! Yet there’s nothing else that I can do——

Stop. There is one thing.

For, as if flashed in letters of fire over the dim purple sky over the London roofs outside my window, I seem to see the words—

“FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS!”

And they mean, not only a solution of the difficulties of Miss Trant, typist, not only[27] comforts and security for Cicely, the show-girl out of work, but the saving of our family name and honour from disgrace. Help instead of ruin for that poor dear weak-kneed broken reed of a brother of mine.

[27]

It’s Providence, that wildly eccentric scheme of the Governor’s. I don’t care what its object may be. I only know that now—now—I daren’t refuse to fall in with it. Never mind the details. The main fact is that I must have that hundred pounds, and this is the only way to it.

I’ve just taken supper into our sitting-room, and I’ve been able to smile quite recklessly down into the woe-begone, girlish face under the arnica bandages.

“Buck up, Cis, and eat some really good scrambled eggs with little bits of ham chopped up in them. And then there’s some glass loganberries, hot; and somebody’d been what Mrs. Skinner calls ‘pampering the milk,’ so I got a brown jar of cream for them. One comfort of living in a ménage without any men (a joke, so please laugh) is that we can eat what we like, instead of stodging horrible, gristly chops and steaks and potatoes every night of our lives. And I brought in some red ink—not Veuve Emu this time, but really decent Burgundy to cheer us up——”

“But, my dear—!” protested Cicely, with[28] the scared glance of the business-girl who knows what it costs to eat and drink.

[28]

“It’s not extravagance. I can afford it.”

“You can’t! You can only just manage to scrape along for yourself—and you know your poor darling hat’s awful, and you told me you couldn’t get another—you haven’t managed to put by a penny for ‘extras’—you told me yesterday——”

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