nd then, in a different, a more diffident voice, "Then you'll consent
to relieve my mind by keeping the contents of that envelope--I mean of
course by spending them? As a matter of fact I've a confession to make
to you." He looked at her deprecatingly. "I've just arranged with my
London banker to make up those Hamburg dividends. He'll send you the
money in notes. He understands----" and then he got rather red. "He
understands that I'm practically your trustee, Mrs. Otway."

"But, Major Guthrie--it isn't _true_! How could you say such a thing?"

She felt confused, unhappy, surprised, awkward, grateful. Of course she
couldn't take this man's money! He was a friend, in some ways a very
close friend of hers, but she hadn't known him more than four years. If
she _should_ run short of money, why there must be a dozen people or
more on whose friendship she had a greater claim, and who could, and
would, help her.

And then Mary Otway suddenly ran over in secret review her large circle
of old friends and acquaintances, and she realised, with a shock of pain
and astonishment, that there was not one of them to whom she would wish
to go for help in that kind of trouble. Of her wide circle--and like
most people of her class she had a very wide circle--there was only one
person, and that was the man who was now sitting looking at her with so
much concern in his eyes, to whom it would even have occurred to her to
confess that her income had failed through her foolish belief in the
stability, and the peaceful intentions, of Germany.

Far, far quicker than it would have taken for her to utter her thoughts
aloud, these painful thoughts and realisations flashed through her
brain. If she had been content to put into this Hamburg Loan only the
amount of the legacy she had inherited three years ago! But she had done
more than that--she had sold out sound English railway stock after that
interview she had had with a pleasant-speaking German business man in
the big London Hamburg Loan office. He had said to her, "Madam, this is
the opportunity of a lifetime!" And she had believed him. The kind
German friend who had written to her about the matter had certainly
acted in good faith. Of that she could rest assured. But this was very
small consolation now.

"So you see, Mrs. Otway, that it's all settled--been settled over your
head, as it were. And you'll oblige me, you'll make me feel that you're
really treating me as a friend, if you say not