a temporary advance?'
She was very proud of this clever suggestion.

He shook his head: 'No, the bank won't.'

The fact was that the bank had long been pressing him to deposit
security for his over-draft.

'I tell you what might be done,' he said, brightening as her idea gave
birth to another one in his mind. 'Uncle Meshach might lend some money
on the deeds. You shall go down to-morrow morning and ask him, Nora.'

'Me!' She was scared at this result.

'Yes, you,' he insisted, full of eagerness. 'It's your house. Ask him to
let you have five hundred on the house for a short while. Tell him we
want it. You can get round him easily enough.'

'Jack, I can't do it, really.'

'Oh yes, you can,' he assured her. 'No one better. He likes you. He
doesn't like me--never did. Ask him for five hundred. No, ask him for a
thousand. May as well make it a thousand. It'll be all the same to him.
You go down in the morning, and do it for me.'

Stanway's animation became quite cheerful.

'But about the title--the flaw?' she feebly questioned.

'That won't frighten uncle,' said Stanway positively. 'He knows the
title is good enough. That's only a technical detail.'

'Very well,' she agreed, 'I'll do what I can, Jack.'

'That's good,' he said.

And even now, the resolve once made, she did not lose her sense of
tranquil optimism, her mild happiness, her widespreading benevolence.
The result of this talk with John aroused in her an innocent vanity,
for was it not indirectly due to herself that John had been able to see
a way out of his difficulties?

They soon afterwards dismissed the subject, put it with care away in a
corner; and John finished his supper.

'Is Mr. Twemlow still in the district?' she asked vivaciously.

'Yes,' said John, and there was a pause.

'You're doing some business together, aren't you, Jack?' she hazarded.

John hesitated. 'No,' he said, 'he only wanted to see me about old
Twemlow's estate--some details he was after.'

'I felt it,' she mused. 'I felt all the time it was that that was wrong.
And John is worrying over it! But he needn't--he needn't--and he doesn't
know!'

She exulted.

She could read plainly the duplicity in his face. She knew that he had
done some wicked thing, and that all his life was a maze of more or less
equivocal stratagems. But she was so used to the character of her
husband that this aspect of the situation scarcely impressed her. It was
her new active beneficent int