e trusted she had a fortune,
for, as he came to think thereon, he remembered that he was desperately
poor. As far as he could make out from his agent, a grim, silent man,
who had taken an evident dislike to him from the first, there was no
money anywhere. The rents would come in at Michaelmas; but the interest
of heavy mortgages had to be paid, the estate had to be kept up. There
was succession duty; there were debts--long outstanding debts--which
came pouring in now, which Waters spread before him with an iron smile,
and which poor Dare contemplated with his head on one side, and solemn,
arched eyebrows. When Dare was not smiling he was always preternaturally
solemn. There was no happy medium in his face, or consequently in his
mind, which was generally gay, but, if not, was involved in a tragic
gloom.

"These bills, my friend," he would say at last, tapping them in deep
dejection, and raising his eyebrows into his hair, "how do we pay them?"

But Waters did not know. How should he, Waters, know? Waters only knew
that the farmers would want a reduction in these bad times--Mr. Dare
might be sure of _that_. And what with arrears, and one thing and
another, he need not expect more than two-thirds of his rents when they
did arrive. Mr. Dare might lay his account for _that_.

The only money which Dare received to carry on with, on his accession to
the great honor and dignity of proprietor of Vandon, was brought to him
by the old dairywoman of the house, a faithful creature, who produced
out of an old stocking the actual coins which she had received for the
butter and cheese she had sold, of which she showed Dare an account,
chalked up in some dead language on the dairy door.

She was a little doubled-up woman, who had served the family all her
life. Dare's ready smile and handsome face had won her heart before he
had been many days at Vandon, in spite of "his foreign ways," and he
found himself constantly meeting her unexpectedly round corners, where
she had been lying in wait for him, each time with a secret revelation
to whisper respecting what she called the "goin's on."

"You'll not tell on me, sir, but it's only right you should know as Mrs.
Smith" (the house-keeper, of whom Dare stood in mortal terror) "has them
fine damask table-cloths out for the house-keeper's room; I see 'em
myself; and everything going to rag and ruin in the linen closet!" Or,
"Joseph has took in another flitch this very day, sir, as Mrs. Smi