her hand, her breast heaving with
emotion.

"What do you suggest should be done, Miss de la Molle?" said Edward
Cossey gently.

"I suggest that--that--if you will be so kind, you should persuade
Cossey and Son to forego their intention of calling in the money."

"It is quite impossible," he answered. "My father ordered the step
himself, and he is a hard man. It is impossible to turn him if he
thinks he will lose money by turning. You see he is a banker, and has
been handling money all his life, till it has become a sort of god to
him. Really I do believe that he would rather beggar every friend he
has than lose five thousand pounds."

"Then there is no more to be said. The place must go, that's all,"
replied Ida, turning away her head and affecting to busy herself in
removing some dried leaves from a chrysanthemum plant. Edward,
watching her however, saw her shoulders shake and a big tear fall like
a raindrop on the pavement, and the sight, strongly attracted as he
was and had for some time been towards the young lady, was altogether
too much for him. In an instant, moved by an overwhelming impulse, and
something not unlike a gust of passion, he came to one of those
determinations which so often change the whole course and tenour of
men's lives.

"Miss de la Molle," he said rapidly, "there may be a way found out of
it."

She looked up enquiringly, and there were the tear stains on her face.

"Somebody might take up the mortgages and pay off Cossey and Son."

"Can you find anyone who will?" she asked eagerly.

"No, not as an investment. I understand that thirty thousand pounds
are required, and I tell you frankly that as times are I do not for
one moment believe the place to be worth that amount. It is all very
well for your father to talk about land recovering itself, but at
present, at any rate, nobody can see the faintest chance of anything
of the sort. The probabilities are, on the contrary, that as the
American competition increases, land will gradually sink to something
like a prairie value."

"Then how can money be got if nobody will advance it?"

"I did not say that nobody will advance it; I said that nobody would
advance it as an investment--a friend might advance it."

"And where is such a friend to be found? He must be a very
disinterested friend who would advance thirty thousand pounds."

"Nobody in this world is quite disinterested, Miss de la Molle; or at
any rate very few are. What would