be also ruinous to your brother. It is my painful duty
to tell you that your money so advanced is on a most
precarious footing. The firm, in addition to their present
liabilities, are not worth half the money; or, I fear I
may say, any part of it. I presume there is a working
profit, as two families live upon the business. Whether,
if you were to come upon them as a creditor, you could get
your money out of their assets, I cannot say; but you,
perhaps, will not feel yourself disposed to resort to such
a measure. I have considered it my duty to tell you all
the facts, and though your distinct authority to us to
advance the money absolves us from responsibility, I must
regret that we did not make further inquiries before we
allowed so large a sum of money to pass out of our hands.

I am, dear Madam,
Your faithful servant,

JONATHAN SLOW.

Mr Rubb's promised visit was to take place in eight or ten days from
the date on which this letter was received. Miss Mackenzie's ears, as
I have said, tingled as she read it. In the first place, it gave her
a terrible picture of the precarious state of her brother's business.
What would he do,--he with his wife, and all his children, if things
were in such a state as Mr Slow described them? And yet a month or
two ago he was giving champagne and iced puddings for dinner! And
then what words that discreet old gentleman, Mr Slow, had spoken
about Mr Rubb, and what things he had hinted over and above what he
had spoken! Was it not manifest that he conceived Mr Rubb to have
been guilty of direct fraud?

Miss Mackenzie at once made up her mind that her money was gone! But,
in truth, this did not much annoy her. She had declared to herself
once before that if anything was wrong about the money she would
regard it as a present made to her brother; and when so thinking of
it, she had, undoubtedly, felt that it was, not improbably, lost to
her. It was something over a hundred a year to be deducted from her
computed income, but she would still be able to live at the Paragon
quite as well as she had intended, and be able also to educate
Susanna. Indeed, she could do this easily and still save money, and,
therefore, as regarded the probable loss, why need she be unhappy?

Before the morning was over she had succeeded in white-washing Mr
Rubb in her own mind. It is, I think, certainly the fact that women
are less pervious to ideas of honesty