was therefore to take place almost immediately after dinner.

"Tell Mr. Prendergast that I will be there," he said to the servant.
And so that afternoon passed away, and the dinner also, very slowly
and very sadly.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE TELLING OF THE TALE.

The dinner passed away as the former dinners had done; and as soon
as Aunt Letty got up Mr. Prendergast also rose, and touching Herbert
on his shoulder, whispered into his ear, "You'll come to me at eight
then." Herbert nodded his head; and when he was alone he looked
at his watch. These slow dinners were not actually very long, and
there still remained to him some three-quarters of an hour for
anticipation.

What was to be the nature of this history? That it would affect
himself personally in the closest manner he could not but know.
There seemed to be no doubt on the minds of any of them that the
affair was one of money, and his father's money questions were his
money questions. Mr. Prendergast would not have been sent for with
reference to any trifle; nor would any pecuniary difficulty that was
not very serious have thrown his father into such a state of misery.
Could it be that the fair inheritance was absolutely in danger?

Herbert Fitzgerald was by no means a selfish man. As regarded
himself, he could have met ruin in the face with more equanimity than
most young men so circumstanced. The gilt of the world had not eaten
into his soul; his heart was not as yet wedded to the splendour of
pinchbeck. This is saying much for him; for how seldom is it that the
hearts and souls of the young are able to withstand pinchbeck and
gilding? He was free from this pusillanimity; free as yet as regarded
himself; but he was hardly free as regarded his betrothed. He had
promised her, not in spoken words but in his thoughts, rank, wealth,
and all the luxuries of his promised high position; and now on
her behalf, it nearly broke his heart to think that they might be
endangered.

Of his mother's history, he can hardly be said to have known
anything. That there had been something tragic in her early life;
that something had occurred before his father's marriage; and that
his mother had been married twice, he had learned,--he hardly
knew when or from whom. But on such matters there had never been
conversation between him and any of his own family; and it never
occurred to him that all this sorrow arose in any way from this
subject. That his father had taken some fata