could see nothing. Her
eyes were blurred with tears. She breathed quickly, trying to control
herself.

'I've been expecting it for a long time,' she said at last. 'I've
refused to face it, and I put the thought away from me, but I knew
really that it must come to that.'

'I'm very sorry,' said Dick helplessly.

She turned on him fiercely, and the colour rose to her cheeks. But she
restrained herself and left unsaid the bitter words that had come to
her tongue. She made a pitiful gesture of despair. He felt how poor were
his words of consolation, and how inadequate to her great grief, and he
was silent.

'And what about George?' she asked.

George was then eighteen, and on the point of leaving Winchester. It had
been arranged that he should go to Oxford at the beginning of the next
term.

'Lady Kelsey has offered to pay his expenses at the 'Varsity,' answered
Dick, 'and she wants you to go and stay with her for the present.'

'Do you mean to say we're penniless?' asked Lucy, desperately.

'I think you cannot depend on your father for much regular assistance.'

Lucy was silent again.

Lady Kelsey was the elder sister of Mrs. Allerton, and some time after
that lady's marriage had accepted a worthy merchant whose father had
been in partnership with hers; and he, after a prosperous career crowned
by surrendering his seat in Parliament to a defeated cabinet-minister--a
patriotic act for which he was rewarded with a knighthood--had died,
leaving her well off and childless. She had but one other nephew, Robert
Boulger, her brother's only son, but he was rich with all the inherited
wealth of the firm of Boulger & Kelsey; and her affections were placed
chiefly upon the children of the man whom she had loved devotedly and
who had married her sister.

'I was hoping you would come up to town with me now,' said Dick. 'Lady
Kelsey is expecting you, and I cannot bear to think of you by yourself
here.'

'I shall stay till the last moment.'

Dick hesitated again. He had wished to keep back the full brutality of
the blow, but sooner or later it must be given.

'The place is already sold. Your father accepted an offer from
Jarrett--you remember him, he has been down here; he is your father's
broker and chief creditor--and everything else is to go to Christy's at
once.'

'Then there is no more to be said.'

She gave Dick her hand.

'You won't mind if I don't come to the station with you?'

'Won't you come up to Lon