gone through a crisis of life, and was not altogether the
same as before; but their mutual liking subsisted. Obliged to retrench
his hospitality, Warburton never seemed altogether at his ease when
Franks was in his room; nor could he overcome what seemed to him the
shame of having asked payment of a debt from a needy friend,
notwithstanding the fact, loudly declared by Franks himself, that
nothing could have been more beneficial to the debtor's moral health.
So Will listened rather than talked, and was sometimes too obviously in
no mood for any sort of converse.

Sherwood he had not seen since the disastrous optimist's flight into
Wales; nor had there come any remittance from him since the cheque for
a hundred pounds. Two or three times, however, Godfrey had
written--thoroughly characteristic letters--warm, sanguine,
self-reproachful. From Wales he had crossed over to Ireland, where he
was working at a scheme for making a fortune out of Irish eggs and
poultry. In what the "work" consisted, was not clear, for he had no
money, beyond a small loan from his relative which enabled him to live;
but he sent a sheet of foolscap covered with computations whereby his
project was proved to be thoroughly practical and vastly lucrative.

Meanwhile, he had made one new acquaintance, which was at first merely
a source of amusement to him, but little by little became something
more. In the winter days, when his business was new, there one day came
into the shop a rather sour-lipped and querulous-voiced lady, who after
much discussion of prices, made a modest purchase and asked that the
goods might be sent for her. On hearing her name--Mrs. Cross--the
grocer smiled, for he remembered that the Crosses of whom he knew from
Norbert Franks, lived at Walham Green, and the artist's description of
Mrs. Cross tallied very well with the aspect and manner of this
customer. Once or twice the lady returned; then, on a day of very bad
weather, there came in her place a much younger and decidedly more
pleasing person, whom Will took to be Mrs. Cross's daughter. Facial
resemblance there was none discoverable; in bearing, in look, in tone,
the two were different as women could be; but at the younger lady's
second visit, his surmise was confirmed, for she begged him to change a
five-pound note, and, as the custom is in London shops, endorsed it
with her name--"Bertha Cross." Franks had never spoken much of Miss
Cross; "rather a nice sort of girl," was