In whatever condition a man may be placed, under the will of Heaven, there is generally something to alleviate it, if he seek perseveringly; and always something to aggravate it, without any exertion on his part. In my present trouble I had several consolations; and the best and sweetest of them was the kindness of my sister Grace. She had leaped, without looking for any signal, or even any ground to jump from, to the solid conclusion that her poor brother George had been treated most cruelly, shamefully, shockingly, and if there be worse than this, put it on the pile. And yet she never spoke of it—never at least to me (though she may have filled the world with it to her beloved Jackson)—but let me know her sympathies by a silent lift of cover, as a large and capable ham-boiler does,—when a tin saucepan would have blown its top off. A man loathes sympathy if he is of English race; nothing irritates him more than for other fellows to come prying down into what goes on inside him. Even to his dearest friend, he does not stretch out his heart, like a washerwoman's line; what may be inside it is his own concern; and, like a gentleman, he must not be too curious about that, so long as it leads him into nothing mean. All I can say is that I never felt inclined to be savage towards the female race, because one of them had disappointed me. And the beauty of it was that I could not hold one spark of rancour against her. The great generosity of love was in me; and all the fault I had to find went abroad among her sex, but never touched herself. So do jilted poets wail about all other women, but acquit the one they love.

But Grace showed her sympathy more delicately, according to her sex and education. What pleased me most in her behaviour was that she never brought her own little whiffs of love—and lovers are always having either whiffs, or tiffs—into her placid pretty interviews with me. She even broke out against her own sect, now and then—for the women had begun to make sect of sex even then, as they feign to do now altogether—and expressed a contempt of them, which any man would have been extremely rash to acquiesce in. She meant it for the best, and I was much obliged about it; but not the faintest fibre of my heart was put in tune by it.

Then all of a sudden it became the duty of my life to comfort her. One evening, getting on for Christmas-tide, I was sitting in my beloved den, after a rather hard day's work, as glum as a Briton can wish to be, but soothed by my pipe, and the smell of saddles, when in came Grace very quietly and kindly, but without saying anything at first, as if I were too busy to notice her. She began to sweep a trifle of tobacco-dust which had dropped on the table contradictorily—for I am a wonderfully tidy fellow—into the pink cup of her palm; and then she went and put something straight that was straight enough before for any man; and then she pretended not to hear me, when I asked—"What is the matter, dear?" for I knew as well as a thousand sighs could have told me, that she was in trouble; and being up to every trick of hers, I was sure that her eyes were full of tears, although she would not let me see them.

"Butter returned on your hands again?" I suggested in a feeling tone; for there was an old lady, quite a double patent screw, at the further end of the parish, who was never tired of boasting—as old Croaker told us more than once—that her butter was made by a baronet's daughter, yet sent her such messages as no Duchess would think of sending to her dairymaid. "Returned on my own hands," Grace seemed to mutter, and I let her take her time, unable as I was to make this out. Then without caring properly where she might be in the narrow little room, she hit upon, by force of a gleam from the fireplace, that very same cracked and spotted looking-glass, in which my friend Tom had admired himself. With infinitely better reason—however feminine and wavering—Grace Cranleigh might have regarded herself, and defied any one (except Dariel) to peep over the snowy shoulders. But instead of pride, what came? I know not. Only that I flung my pipe away, and had my darling sister in my arms, where she cast away all pretence, and would have spoiled any waistcoat that was not worn out.

"He—he—he," she sobbed. And I said—"What he?" and she answered "him," as if there was only one man in the world, though he might go into fifty cases. "Jackson?" I asked. But she would not have it even at such a crisis.

"My Jack," she declared, looking up at me, as if every George was rubbish; "my own Jack—will you never understand? And when I was getting so fond of him."

"Getting indeed! Why you have thought of nothing else, for at least three months. You have made too much of him; with the usual result, I daresay."

"Oh don't touch me! Don't come near me! No wonder your Dariel ran away. You have not the least sense of noble things. What have I done, to have such a brother?"

"There must be a crack in the family," I said, as she cut away into a Windsor chair, and fixed all her soul on the fire, as if it were the only warm thing left on earth.

"Wonderful, wonderful," I pursued my own reflections, till she should come round.

"And you don't even seem to care to ask what it is he has done to me!" Grace began to show her pretty nose over her left shoulder, while I snuffed the candles, and began to fill a pipe. "Though you know the high opinion I always have of your opinion."

"You had better not say a word about it," I answered in the kindest manner; "no doubt it is the usual thing. You told me that all men were alike, till you made such an idol of poor Stocks and Stones. Now you see that he is just like the rest of us."

"I have long ceased to hope for any greatness from you; but I did expect some fairness," my sister spoke as if I had not allowed her to say a word all this time: "you know that I cannot argue, George; or at least you pretend to think so, which comes to the very same thing with a man. Then how thoroughly ashamed of yourself you ought to be, as soon as you can spare me time to tell you the simple truth. Mr. Jackson Stoneman, the gentleman you with such admirable taste and such lofty humour call 'Stocks and Stones,' is not tired of me, as you kindly imagine. In fact he thinks more of me than ever. If you had only seen his face——"

"Don't cry, my dear child. Now don't cry any more. I am very sorry if I misunderstood you. But how could I help it? You do take such a time. What can be his reason for behaving in this manner?"

"Because he is ru—ru—ruined!" She never was much of a hand at crying; but this terrible word, and her effort at it, served as the cord that brings down the shower-bath. "Hoo—hoo—hoo!" she went, and it was no good for me to say anything. "Oh that Dariel were crying for me like that!" was the thought that came into my selfish heart. "I should not mind being ru—ru—ruined, if I could only hope for that!" Then Grace got better, as girls always do, if you let them have their cry out.

"What makes it so—so distressing, so heart-breaking, is that the whole of it has been through me—through me, whom he chose without a single penny—me, who had nothing more than poverty to bring him, poverty, and faith, and a very ordinary mind! And then, not content with that, I must do my best to rob him of every farthing of his noble fortune. Perhaps one of the wealthiest men in the world, until he set eyes upon unlucky me. Oh George, it will never be in your power to understand my pure contempt for money! Yet you ought not to rob anybody of it; and I have robbed the noblest man that ever lived of every penny, every penny!"

"In the name of the forty thieves, and Morgiana, and the man they cut into four pieces, how can you have done all this?" I asked, being certain that there never was a girl more reasonable, yet remembering how the wisest of them love a little speculation.

"To anybody but you, George, it would be too self-evident to require any explanation. Why will you drive me to a thing so painful? Do you mean to say that he does not love me?"

"Better than his life, I believe; and better even than his money. But how does that bear upon the matter? They don't quote love upon the Stock Exchange."

"Oh George! And you think you are a business man!" Grace smiled gloriously through her tears, possibly through her triumph over me, probably through the joy of my assurance. "Can anybody do two things at once? Could my Jack attend to ups and downs, keep his whole mind intent on Argentinas, contangoes, fundangoes, holdovers, and holdunders, and even unspeakable Turks with fifty wives, when the whole of his pure heart was down here? Why he only went up about once a-week, if he could get me to go out nutting with him."

"Alas, I see. Neglected business. Left understrappers, and dashing young clerks, and trusty old codgers with pens behind their ears to stick to the stools, while he made sweet hay. But there must be something more than that."

"You turn everything into vulgarity, George. And you are capable of laughing at the most sacred things. But there was more than that, and a great deal more than that. You may have heard him speak in his grand confiding manner of a man named Franks, who has been with him many years. He has promoted him from place to place, and trusted him with almost everything; and I do believe that Franks had no intention of doing anything crooked. And he spoke in the most enthusiastic terms of me, though of course they never mention such a subject in the office. And when Black Friday came, as you know it did, through some very stupid error of the Government, Jack only laughed at first, except for the sake of some dear friends of his, who were hit rather hard; it appeared so ridiculous to suppose that a firm like his could be affected. But there proved to be something, I cannot quite understand it, although I keep my books so clearly that I know every farthing owing to me, something, some involvement, some terrible affair, which will force him to give up the Hall, and the shooting, and the pedigree Butterfly cows, and even me."

"Don't let him do it. Don't hear of it for a moment. You will never get such another fellow;" I exclaimed, as she turned away to wipe her glistening cheeks. "He'll come round as right as a roach in the end. You didn't let him off on that tack, I hope?"

"As for letting him off, dear George, is he a trout that I should treat him so? He is not like a slippery fish for a moment, but a deep-hearted, true-hearted, wonderful man. Why his conversation is as different from yours—but I will not depreciate you, unless you go against me. Only I should like to know how I can help myself. When a gentleman says—'I am truly sorry, but I can't have any more to do with you'—oh dear, oh dear, what can any lady do?"

"Lay hold of his coat, and say, 'None of that nonsense! I am the best judge of that question, and I have settled it the other way; unless you put up the bans within a month, you must favor me with the address of your Solicitors.'"

"Don't laugh at me. I have never laughed at you. I did tell him over and over again that the money could never make any difference to me, and indeed that I was very glad, except for his sake, because then nobody could ever say—but he talked of the duty of a man, and so forth, and the crime of allowing me to sacrifice myself, and a Cranleigh the wife of a bankrupt, and I don't know what else, for I broke down then, and he was obliged——"

"Of course he was—any amount of physical sustentation, as the reporters call it. But leave it to me, my dear. Where is he now? Too late for him to go back to London, I should think. But I wonder he didn't come to see me."

"He did. But you were not to be found. Oh George, I am thinking of every one of us. What shall we do? The Hall will be thrown upon our hands again, at a time of year when you would as soon live in a hearse. And Harold has made another of his great hits, which always cost a hundred pounds, and never produce a penny. How often I wish that I were like old Sally, without any pedigree Butterfly blood, and allowed to go and rout my husband up, just as Mrs. Slemmick is!"

"She routed him out from the root-house, last week," said I, being glad of any frivolous turn that might bring the dry colours into the rainbow; "she believed that he was gone for ever, without leaving his wages in his Sunday waistcoat pocket, and Snowdrop Violet Hyacinth just wheezing into the whooping-cough. But no; she underrated the nobility of man. He had tucked up his legs on a big flower-pot with a pipe in his mouth; and his heart was so full that he was going without breakfast. Are women alone to be considered faithful?"

"You mean that I am worse than Mrs. Slemmick." Girls never take the moral of the proverb aright. "Very well, I daresay I am. But I will never tuck my feet upon a flower-pot, and wait to be coaxed home, when the tea is getting cold. There is something very large in the character of Slemmick, and he shows it by his confidence in feminine affection. At the same time, it does appear a little small of you, to quote Mother Slemmick against me. She is married, and cannot help herself."

"Hear, hear!" I cried, leaving her to put the point to it; which she did with a blush, and a very cheerful smile. Then she gave me a kiss, to make up for little words; and I set out to see what I could do for her.

I found the poor Stockbroker looking stock-broken, and sitting on a hard chair, with his long legs crossed.

"Off for the Mediterranean?" I asked; and he said—"Bay of Biscay, or Bay of Fundy. Going to the bottom anyhow."

"Rot!" I replied, with less elegance than terseness. "Don't try to make me think that you would ever throw the sponge up. I know you a bit better than that, Jackson Stoneman."

"'Rot!' I replied, with less elegance than terseness."

"Would you like me to be a thief, George Cranleigh? If I choose to be a thief, I can slip out very lightly. But if I prefer to be an honest man, there is very small chance of my doing it."

He told me in a few words what his position was, owing to a panic which had ended in a crash, through the roguery of a few, and the folly of the many; and how his own firm had become involved in thoroughly unsound transactions, mainly through his own inattention and his confidence in a very clever fellow, who had cut things a little too fine at last, as very clever fellows nearly always do.

"We must lose a quarter of a million," he said, "even if we pull through at all, which is more than doubtful. All depends upon to-morrow. But it is not for myself that I care, George. It is for your darling sister—the best, and the bravest, and the most unselfish girl—why she wanted to stick to me through everything! She behaved as if it could make no difference between us."

"I should hope so indeed. I would disown her if she did otherwise. Did you think that she was going to have you for your money, Jackson?"

"I am not quite so bad as that, you may be sure. Still you must excuse a modest fellow for thinking his money the best part of him." Here I was glad to see one of his old dry smiles. "But the point of it is this, as you know well enough without my telling—I can have nothing more to say to Grace, who was worth all my cash, and my credit, and ambitions, and everything except my conscience to me."

"That is all very fine, and very lofty in its way," I answered with a superior smile, which refreshed him, as it was meant to do; "and among City people it may hold good, or the big world of the Clubland. But no sound Englishman takes it so. You don't suppose that my father approved of your going in for our Grace, because you then were a wealthy man, I should hope." I spoke with strong confidence; but perhaps the strength of it was chiefly in my voice.

"God forbid!" he replied with horror; while I tried not to doubt that God had forbidden. "No, I am well aware that Sir Harold disliked it from the first, and Lady Cranleigh even more. It was nothing but the goodness of dear Grace. And that makes it such a frightful thing for me. Why, that Angel was ready to stick to me, like—like a brick, if I only would allow it. A man who knows the world would never believe it for a moment."

"Then he must know a very bad world, and be a worthy member of it. What do you suppose I would have done to my sister, if she had been mean enough to shy off, because of your misfortune?"

"How can I tell, George? You are one of the most pig-headed fellows going. But you could not have been angry with her, for not being quite as stubborn as you are."

"Jackson, this is what I would have done. I would have taken the mane-scissors that hang above my mantel, and shorn off her great crop of hair to her ears. No gold for her there, if her heart were all pinchbeck."

Stoneman looked at me with outraged feelings. "Not even a brother could do that," he said, "brutal as brothers by nature seem to be. But without any humbug, George, do you really mean that you wish it to go on?"

"If I did not, I should be a wretched snob. It was not for money that you wanted Grace; and you insult her by fancying that she wanted you for yours."

"All this is very pleasant doctrine, and an edifying parable for little boys and girls;" the Stockbroker had a peculiar trick of showing his keen eyes as if in a gable, when his mind was puzzled or excited; "but it would not hold water, George, either in a court of honour, or a council of wisdom. Grace is entitled, both by birth and beauty, and I am sure that I might say by intellect as well, to a position which high rank alone, or wealth on her husband's part, can secure. High rank I cannot give her. Wealth I could have given. But the prospect of that has vanished, and with it vanishes all my hope of her. Oh that she had only thrown me over! I could have got over it then. But not now."

"Now look here," I said, as a Briton always calls attention to the knock-down blow he is delivering; "all that would be worth listening to, if it had anything to do with the matter. But, as it happens, my sister Grace doesn't care a flip about position, any more than I do, or you, or anybody else with a ha'porth of common-sense. We value the opinion of good people; and we like money for the comfort of others, as well as ourselves. But as for that mysterious affair you call 'position'—the more you poke your head up, the harder cracks you get on it. Grace will be contented with whatever pleases you. That holds you together, and you never slip away. People who have only got a lawn enjoy it a thousand times as much as a lord enjoys his park. And a man who loves his wife does not want to lose her among a thousand men and women he has never heard of, all pushing about to please themselves, and sneering at them both, by way of gratitude."

"You will make a fine domestic character, George, if you only act up to your theories. I shall never forget your true friendship and noble behaviour in this matter. I shall take my own course, however, as I always do. I know what is right: and you may talk for ever. There is only one voice that could move me, and that one shall have no chance of doing it (even if desired) for her own sweet sake. But everything will depend upon to-morrow; if things are as bad then as they have been to-day, there will be no escape for me. Grace shall never be a bankrupt's wife. If her sense of honour urges it, mine forbids. And it is not only honour, but common-sense, my friend. Your family has fallen in the world too much already. It shall not be dragged lower by any connection with a defaulting Stockbroker."

His face showed no sign of emotion now; and I owned to myself that from his point of view no other course was possible for a man of honour. Whether his point of view was right or wrong, is quite a different question; but in spite of all my reasoning, I have very little doubt that I should have done as he did.