well done, and felt satisfied accordingly. As for
Meshach, he was decidedly caught unawares. He might, perhaps, have
suspected from the beginning that she was only an emissary of John's,
but the form and magnitude of her proposal were a violent surprise to
him. He hesitated. She could see clearly that he sought reasons by which
to justify himself in acquiescence.

'It's your affair?' he questioned meditatively.

'Quite my own,' she assured him.

'Let me see----'

'I shall get it!' she said to herself, and she was astounded at the
felicitous event of the enterprise. She could scarcely believe her good
luck, but she knew beyond any doubt that she was not mistaken in the
signs of Meshach's demeanour. She thought she might even venture to ask
him for an explanation of his warning letter about Arthur Twemlow.

At that moment Aunt Hannah and the middle-aged servant re-entered the
house, and the servant had to pass through the parlour to reach the
kitchen. The atmosphere which Meshach and Leonora had evolved in
solitude from their respective individualities was dissipated instantly.
The parlour became nothing but the parlour, with its glass partition,
its antimacassars, its Meshach by the hob, and its diminutive Hannah
uttering fatuous, affectionate exclamations of pleasure.

Leonora's heart was pierced by a sudden stab of doubt, as she waited for
the result.

'Sister,' said Meshach, 'what dost think? Here's your nephew been
speculating in stocks and shares till he can't hardly turn round----'

'Uncle!' Leonora exclaimed horrified, 'I never said such a thing!'

'Sh!' said Hannah in an awful whisper, as she shut the kitchen door.

'Till he can't hardly turn round,' Meshach continued; 'and now he wants
Leonora here to mortgage her house to get him out of his difficulties.
Haven't I always told you as John would find himself in a rare fix one
of these days?'

Few human beings could dominate another more completely than Meshach
dominated his sister. But here, for Leonora's undoing, was just a case
where, without knowing it, Hannah influenced her brother. He had a
reputation to keep up with Hannah, a great and terrible reputation, and
in several ways a loan by him through Leonora to John would have damaged
it. A few minutes later, and he would have been committed both to the
loan and to the demonstration of his own consistency in the humble eyes
of Hannah; but the old spinster had arrived too soon. The spell was
broke