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“After what I have now written, there is only one thing to add: I beg to decline accepting your excuses, and I shall expect to see you to-morrow evening, as we arranged. I am an obstinate old woman, but I am also your faithful friend and servant,

“MARY CALLENDER.”

Ernest looked up from the letter. “What can this possibly mean?” he wondered.

But he was too sensible a man to be content with wondering; he decided on keeping his engagement.

What Dr. Johnson called “the insolence of wealth” appears far more frequently in the houses of the rich than in the manners of the rich. The reason is plain enough. Personal ostentation is, in the very nature of it, ridiculous; but the ostentation which exhibits magnificent pictures, priceless china, and splendid furniture, can purchase good taste to guide it, and can assert itself without affording the smallest opening for a word of depreciation or a look of contempt. If I am worth a million of money, and if I am dying to show it, I don’t ask you to look at me, I ask you to look at my house.

Keeping his engagement with Mrs. Callender, Ernest discovered that riches might be lavishly and yet modestly used.

In crossing the hall and ascending the stairs, look where he might, his notice was insensibly won by proofs of the taste which is not to be purchased, and the wealth which uses, but never exhibits, its purse. Conducted by a man-servant to the landing on the first floor, he found a maid at the door of the boudoir waiting to announce him. Mrs. Callender advanced to welcome her guest, in a simple evening dress, perfectly suited to her age. All that had looked worn and faded in her fine face by daylight was now softly obscured by shaded lamps. Objects of beauty surrounded her, which glowed with subdued radiance from their background of sober colour. The influence of appearances is the strongest of all outward influences, while it lasts. For the moment the scene produced its impression on Ernest, in spite of the terrible anxieties which consumed him. Mrs. Callender in his office was a woman who had stepped out of her appropriate sphere. Mrs. Callender in her own house was a woman who had risen to a new place in his estimation.

“I am afraid you don’t thank me for forcing you to keep your engagement,” she said, with her friendly tones and her pleasant smile.

“Indeed I do thank you,” he replied. “Your beautiful house and your gracious welcome have persuaded me into forgetting my troubles–for a while.”

The smile passed away from her face. “Then it is true,” she said, gravely.

“Only too true.”

She led him to a seat beside her, and waited to speak again until her maid had brought in the tea.

“Have you read my letter in the same friendly spirit in which I wrote it? “she asked, when they were alone again.

“I have read your letter gratefully, but–“

“But you don’t know yet what I have to say. Let us understand each other before we make any objections on either side. Will you tell me what your present position is–at its worst? I can, and will, speak plainly when my turn comes, if you will honour me with your confidence. Not if it distresses you,” she added, observing him attentively. He was ashamed of his hesitation, and he made amends for it.

“Do you thoroughly understand me?” he asked, when the whole truth had been laid before her without reserve.

She summed up the result in her own words: “If your overdue ship returns safely within a month from this time, you can borrow the money you want without difficulty. If the ship is lost, you have no alternative, when the end of the month comes, but to accept a loan from me or to suspend payment. Is that the hard truth?”

“It is.”

“And the sum you require is–twenty thousand pounds?”