A week later Celia was crouching over her fireless grate. The Wolf was no longer outside the door, but beside her, his red eyes watching her balefully, his cruel teeth showing between his mowing jaws. The hunger, for which the overfed rich man longs in vain, was gnawing at her; she was penniless and well-nigh starving; no longer did she regard the little chorus girl in the floor below her with tender pity and sympathy, but with envy; she knew now how rich she had been with her pound a week.

For days she had tramped the streets, in the intervals of reading the advertisements in the free library, in search of some employment, any employment, which a woman could take up; and her last few pence had been spent in one of those advertisements which tell their own tale of despair. She was willing to do anything; she would have taken a situation as a housemaid; would have gone out charing; for life is precious to all of us, and scruples of refinement disappear when there is no bread in the cupboard. But her applications, for even the lowliest place, were turned down; she had no experience, no character; the persons she interviewed saw, at a glance, that she was a lady, and that was fatal: a lady willing to sink to the position of a housemaid—well, there is something suspicious in it.

As she sat, with her hands tightly clasped, the cold of the early, so-called, summer day chilling her to the marrow, she was cheerfully employed in picturing her death; the discovery of the body, the coroner's inquest, the leader which would be written in the Wire, the properly indignant, stereotyped leader, dwelling with righteous indignation on the "terrible poverty in our midst." She raised her head and looked round the room. No, there was nothing left to sell or pawn—for her dire necessity had driven her to the pawnshop, that last refuge of the destitute, that dire rubicon which, having passed it, a girl like Celia feels is the last barrier between her and self-respect.

A letter lay on the table; it was one from the Museum lad, Reggie Rex, thanking her, with all the fervency of youth, for the words she had written in praise of his story; the hope, the encouragement she had implanted in his breast. She envied him, as she envied everyone who had enough to purchase a loaf, a glass of milk. Then the incident in which he had figured passed from her mind. The strains of Mr. Clendon's violin stole up to her; but that brought no peace, no joy; to enjoy good music when one is starving is an impossibility; the sounds irritated her, and she was glad when they ceased.

Presently she heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and a knock came at her door. She rose, painfully, wearily, and moved with difficulty; for the floor seemed to rock under her, the room to swing round. It was Mr. Clendon.

"I'm sorry to trouble you——" he began; then he saw her face, and, closing the door behind him, took her hand in his. "You are ill," he said.

To attempt concealment she felt would be impossible; worse, ridiculous.

"Not ill; but very hungry," she said, forcing a smile.

He led her to the chair, and she sank into it, turning her face away from him. He glanced round the room quickly, took in its emptiness, the black, cheerless grate, her attitude of utter dejection; then, without a word, he went downstairs. To Celia, hours seemed to elapse after his departure, but it was only a few minutes before he came up again, with bread and other things; but it was the bread only that Celia saw. With all her might and main, she strove to eat slowly, indifferently, the food he pressed upon her; and as she ate, the tears of shame and of relief coursed down her wan cheeks. He had brought fuel also; and, while she was eating, he seemed to devote all his attention to the making of the fire; when it was burning brightly, and she was leaning back, with her hands covering her face, he said, gently, reproachfully:

"Why didn't you come to me—why didn't you tell me?"

"I was ashamed," she said. "I knew you, too, were poor." She tried to laugh, but the laugh was choked in her throat.

"Not too poor to help a friend," he said. "I think you have been very wicked." He tried to speak sternly; but the "My poor child!" that broke from him declared his sympathy. "You have lost your situation?"

"Yes; he died. And I can't find anything else," said Celia, trying to speak calmly. "I've tried—oh, everything. I've spent all my money advertising and answering advertisements. Look! That's my last." With a laugh, she pushed a paper towards him. He glanced at the advertisement and slipped the paper into his pocket. "It's modest, humble enough, isn't it?" she said. "You see, I'm ready to do anything, secretary, companion, housekeeper—oh, anything; even for no salary, just for bed and board."

"I know," he said, with a nod. "It's very rarely that such an advertisement is of any use. Everybody specializes nowadays."

Celia rose and went to the window, that he might not see her face.

"I am stony-broke," she said. "I haven't a penny; and I'm friendless—no, not friendless. How can I thank you, Mr. Clendon! The sight of you—to say nothing of the food—has—has put fresh life into me. Tell me, what do you think I had better do? I'm not proud—why, I'm willing to be a domestic servant, to go to one of the factories to fill match-boxes; but I've no experience. And there are thousands in my plight, thousands of girls who are worse off—well, no, I suppose they couldn't be worse off; and yet—I haven't paid this week's rent; and you know what that means."

"I know," he said, in a low voice.

He was sitting over the fire, looking into the burning coals, with a curious expression on his pallid, wrinkled face; an expression of hesitation, doubt, reluctance; for the moment it seemed as if he had forgotten her, as if he were communing with his own thoughts, working at a problem.

"I have a little money," he said. "I'll go down and pay the rent."

"No, no!" she protested; but he waved his hand, the thin, shapely hand of the man of good birth.

"You'll get something presently; it is always when things are at the worst that they turn. I blame you for not coming to me; it was unkind. But I understand. You are proud; charity comes hard to people like you and me——" He checked himself and rose, buttoning his coat as he did so with the air of a man who has come to a decision. "Yes; I'll pay the rent, and I'll send them up with some coals. Oh, don't be afraid; you shall pay me when things come right. Don't you see, my good girl, that I am glad to be able to help you—that it gratifies my pride? There, sit down and warm yourself, and try to eat some more food. I wish it were better worth eating: but we shall see."

He laid his hand on her shoulder as he passed her on his way to the door, and Celia, blinded by tears, took the hand and carried it to her lips.

Mr. Clendon went down to his own room, almost as barely furnished as Celia's had become; and he stood for a moment or two looking round it with a sigh; then he took up his worn hat and stick, and went out. With bent head, and eyes fixed on the pavement, he made his way to Grosvenor Square; and, mounting the steps of one of the largest of the houses, rang the bell. A dignified hall-porter opened the door leisurely, and eyed the thin, poorly-clad figure and pallid face with stern disfavour.

"Is Lord Sutcombe at home?" asked Mr. Clendon, quietly, and not without a certain dignity.

"His lordship the Marquess is within; suttenly; but——" The man hesitated, with unconcealed suspicion.

"Will you tell his lordship, please, that a gentleman wishes to see him?" said Mr. Clendon.

The porter looked beyond the bowed figure, as if he expected to see someone else, the "gentleman" referred to; then, as he failed to see anyone, he said, severely:

"'Ave you an appointment? 'Is lordship don't see promiskus visitors."

Mr. Clendon seemed to consider for a moment; as if he had expected this difficulty. He wrote the single letter "W" on a piece of paper he found in his pocket, and handed it to the man.

"Please give this to his lordship," he said, still with that quiet air of dignity and composure which had impressed the porter, against his will.

The man eyed the piece of paper doubtfully, and the applicant for admission still more so; then, signing to the bench in the hall, by way of permitting rather than inviting the old man to take a seat, he went slowly up the broad stairs, lined with pictures and statuary, and carpeted with thick Axminster. Mr. Clendon seated himself, leant both hands on his stick and looked around him, not curiously, but with a thoughtful, and yet impassive, expression. Presently the man came down, with evident surprise on his well-fed countenance.

"Please follow me," he said; and Mr. Clendon followed him up the stairs, and was ushered into a small room on the first floor. It was a library, handsomely furnished and luxuriously appointed; a huge fire was burning in the bronze grate, and, as its warmth went out to meet him, Mr. Clendon thought of the fireless grate over which the young girl had crouched. By the table, with one hand pressed hardly against it, stood a middle-aged man, with a pale, careworn face; his hair was flecked with grey; his thin lips drawn and drooping at the corners, as if their possessor was heavily burdened by the cares of the world. That he was agitated was obvious; for the lids flickered over his almost colourless eyes, and the hand he held against his side was clenched tightly.

At sight of the old man he uttered a cry, the kind of cry with which one might greet a ghost.

"Wilfred! You! You! Alive! I—we—thought you were dead."

"I am sorry," said Mr. Clendon. "Yes; I knew that you thought me dead. It was just as well; I wished you to do so. Don't be alarmed; there is nothing to be alarmed at. Permit me to sit down; I have walked some distance."

The Marquess of Sutcombe, with an air of desperation, motioned to a chair, and fell to pacing up and down the room. "I swear that I thought you were dead, Wilfred! When you disappeared, father—all of us—did our best to find you; we searched for you everywhere. We were in the greatest distress, perplexity; for we did not know why you had gone—I don't know even now—I can't, no, I can't believe that it is you! Why did you—disappear?"

"There is no need why I should tell you, Talbot," said Mr. Clendon, calmly. "It is my secret; it must remain so."

"But—but, consider my position!" exclaimed the Marquess, with agitation. "You must do so! Here am I, bearing the title and—and the rest of it, under the impression that my elder brother has died. Wilfred, you must explain. We all believed the report of your death——"

"I know," said Mr. Clendon, quietly, but not apologetically. "I took care that the evidence should satisfy you. Once more, there is no cause for alarm——"

"No cause for alarm! You talk—absurdly! You forget that the fact of your sitting there proves that I am a—a usurper; that I have no right to the title, the estate; that everything belongs to you. By Heaven, Wilfred, I can scarcely believe that you have done this thing, that you could have found it possible to do me—and Percy—such a wrong! Put yourself in my place. How would you like to discover that you were living under false pretences, that you had no right to—everything you hold. Yes; put yourself in my place!"

"That is exactly what I have refused, and still refuse, to do," said Mr. Clendon, quietly. "I see that you think I have come to disclose my identity, to displace you. You are mistaken. To do so after I, of my own free will, have effaced myself all these years, and allowed you to step into my place, would be unjust, would be impossible for—well, one of us, Sutcombe."

"And—and there's Percy, my son," went on the Marquess, as if he ignored, or had not heard, the other man's assurance. "It's hard on me, but it's harder on him; for I—well, I am well-nigh weary of everything, of life itself. My wife died—you may have heard of it—there was nothing left but Percy, and—yes, perhaps you know it—he's a bad lot. He has given me a great deal of trouble, will give me more. He has married beneath him. I had hoped, much as I disapprove of the match, that it might steady him; but I fear——All the same, bad as he is, it's hard on him——"

The Marquess wiped the sweat from his brow and stifled a groan.

"You distress yourself without cause, Talbot. I am sorry to hear that you are not happy, that your son is not—satisfactory. I have not come to add to your unhappiness. Believe that."

"Then why have you disturbed me?" demanded the Marquess, desperately.

"I will tell you," said Mr. Clendon. "Will you not come and sit down? Be calm, and listen to me quietly. Accept my assurance that I have no intention whatever, and never shall have, of taking my proper place, of depriving you of all I resigned. If I ever had any desire to do so, that desire would have died since I entered this house. Are you any happier, Talbot, for the burden which I laid down, resigned to you? I am poor, as you see,"—he glanced at his old, worn clothes—"but——"

The Marquess broke in impatiently.

"Oh, I see that. You look—look as if you'd had bad times; you look old enough to be my father. You look—are dressed—in rags. Do you think that doesn't worry me, and add to my misery? Do you think that, ever since you entered and I recognized you, I haven't been saying to myself, 'This is my elder brother; this old, haggard-looking man, clad like a beggar, is the Marquess of Sutcombe and you are an impostor'?"

"Grant the case as you put it. I am poor, but not unhappy. I will venture to say that I am far happier than you, Talbot," said Mr. Clendon, his dark eyes scanning the careworn face of the Marquess. "I have my niche in the world; I earn my living, such as it is; I am free from care; I have enough laid by to save me from a pauper's grave, while you——"

"Oh, I'm unhappy enough, I'll admit," said the Marquess, with a deep sigh. "I hold your place, and all that it means in the way of money and power; but I'm alone in the world, worse than alone; for Percy, my only son, I tell you—by Heaven, there is not a morning I wake that I do not dread to hear that he has done something to disgrace the name he bears. Wilfred, if you've a mind to take it all back——"

He stretched out his hands with a gesture of renunciation, almost an eager, anticipatory relief.

Mr. Clendon shook his head. "No," he said, resolutely, "you must continue to bear the burden I have imposed upon you, Talbot; and I beg you to believe me, fully and undoubtingly, that I shall never relieve you of your responsibilities, which you have borne so well. Oh, of course, I have watched. I know how admirably you have filled your place, and where I should have failed. Fate, Providence knew better than I what was best for me, for all of us, when it drove me out of the world."

"Tell me, why can't you tell me, why you disappeared?" demanded the Marquess. "Surely you owe it to me!"

"No, I have buried the past," said Mr. Clendon. "Let it lie. But I will tell you why I have forced myself to come to you—yes, forced myself, Talbot, for I knew that it was better that I should remain as one dead."

"Yes, tell me," said the Marquess, with feverish eagerness. "If there is anything I can do, if you have decided to stick to your resolution, if there is nothing I can say that will persuade you to come forward——"

"There is nothing," Mr. Clendon assured him calmly.

The Marquess sighed heavily. "Then you must let me—how shall I put it?—provide for you, take care of your future. You must want money. Oh, it's absurd; it drives me mad! To think that nearly every penny I possess is yours. But tell me what I'm to do, Wilfred."

"Nothing for me—that is directly," said Mr. Clendon. "Don't say any more about myself. I am touched by your generosity—yes, generosity, Talbot; for I feel that you have every reason, every right, to turn upon me and upbraid me for presenting myself after all this time, for harrowing you with the knowledge of my existence. You can do nothing for me in the way of money. I have all I need. I have grown so used to the poverty of my surroundings that, if I were raised out of them I should feel like the prisoner released from the Bastille, and weep for my cell and the prison rations. But you can do something for someone in whom I am interested."

The Marquess looked up, with something like a gleam of apprehension.

"Someone belonging to you? Your son—daughter?"

Mr. Clendon was silent for a moment, then he said: "No, I have no son or daughter. I am childless. The person of whom I speak is a young girl, no relation of mine, scarcely a friend, save for the fact that I have been of service to her, and that she regards me as the only friend she has. We live in the same block of buildings—have met as ships pass in the night. She is a poor girl who has been working as a kind of secretary, but her employer has died suddenly, and she is now penniless and helpless."

The Marquess started to his feet and paced the room again.

"I feel as if I were in a dream, a nightmare," he said. "Here are you, suddenly springing to life, poor, almost destitute, and you come to me, not asking for all that is yours by right, not even for money for yourself, but for someone, for some girl who is not even of your kith and kin, has no claim on you. I always thought you mad, Wilfred, in the old days when we were boys together. I still think you're mad. How could I think otherwise?"

"We are all mad, more or less, Talbot," rejoined Mr. Clendon, with the flicker of a grim smile on his thin lips. "But this young girl—I have taken her misery to heart. If you had seen her as I have seen her—but you haven't, and I have to try to impress her case on you, enlist your sympathies, as well as I can. She is a lady, not by birth, perhaps, but by instinct and training. She has been well educated. That's been against her, of course. It always is with persons in her position; anyway, it makes her lot a still harder one."

"Well, well!" broke in the Marquess. "You want me to give her money. Of course, you can have what you want, any sum; you have but to ask—Ask! it is all yours; you have but to demand!—No, no, I don't mean to be angry, brutal; but, surely, you can understand what I am feeling. How much do you want?"

"Nothing," said Mr. Clendon, with another flickering smile. "My dear Talbot, you don't understand. But I don't blame you; how should you? All the same, we poor people have our little pride; the girl of whom I speak—well, I found her starving in her miserable little room, because she was too proud to descend a flight of steps to mine, to ask for the bread for which she was dying."

The Marquess stared. "Is it possible that such cases can exist?"

"Oh, yes, my dear Talbot," responded Mr. Clendon, with grim irony. "There are more persons die of starvation in London every day than the Boards of Guardians wot of. The doctor calls them 'heart-failure' in his certificate; and he is quite accurate. But let me tell you what I want you to do. This girl has been a secretary; she has been advertising for some similar post; any post, indeed."

He took out the paper and pointed to the advertisement. The Marquess took the paper, passing his hand over his eyes, as if he were dazed, and read the few lines which had cost Celia her last penny.

"Got it?" asked Mr. Clendon. "Well, now, I want you to write an answer to it, Talbot, and offer her a situation."

Lord Sutcombe dropped into his chair, his head sunk in his hands.

"What kind of situation?" he asked, looking up. "Of course, I'll do it—I feel, confused. Little wonder!—What kind of situation? I suppose you have planned it all? I am trying to follow you, to interest myself; but I can only think of you!"

"Yes; I have formed some kind of plan," said Mr. Clendon, in his low, vibrant voice. "There is the library at Thexford. It is a great library, a fine collection; it has been neglected for years; I suppose you have not looked after it?"

"No," said the Marquess, shaking his head. "I seldom go to Thexford. I have been in the Cabinet, as you may know; am still interested in politics—it has been something to do—and, in consequence, I have to live in London most of the time. I have not been to Thexford for two years; the house is kept up, of course; I have often intended going there; but there are the other places."

"Pity!" said Mr. Clendon, looking straight before him, as if he were calling up a memory. "It is a beautiful place; perhaps the most beautiful you've got——"

"You've got," muttered Lord Sutcombe, bitterly.

Mr. Clendon ignored the interruption.

"It is time the library was taken in hand, set to rights, and catalogued, and the rest of it. She will do it very well. Give her a good salary—but not too large a one, or she will suspect; and I do not wish her to know how she obtained the post. You need not see her; she can obtain testimonials from the executors of her late employer. She will give you no trouble; she will do her duty; for she is a lady, and a pure, high-minded girl. Will you do this for me, Talbot?"

"You know that you've no need to ask," said the Marquess. "Do you mean to tell me this is all I can do, that you will permit me to do?"

"That is all," said Mr. Clendon, quietly. "I am much obliged to you. Yes; I am sincerely, unaffectedly grateful. Do you think I don't realize how badly I've treated you, Talbot, not only in allowing you to believe I was dead, but in turning up again? Well, do this for me, help this young girl, and try to persuade yourself that we can cry quits."

"Quits! It is absurd! You are going? By Heaven, I feel that I ought not to let you go. That, in justice to myself, my own sense of right and honour, I ought to detain you, proclaim that——"

"It would be of no use," said Mr. Clendon. "You could not detain me, the disclosure could not serve me. Remember that I am—that I have no child; and that it is only a question of time, a short time, before all you hold will be really, legally yours. Have patience. Let me go my way—it is the only one for me——"

"But you will tell me where you live, where I can find you?" interrupted Lord Sutcombe.

Mr. Clendon smiled, gravely. "I think not, Talbot. To tell you the truth, I am so enamoured of this life of mine, of its solitude and independence, that I cannot run the risk of having it broken in upon. Good-bye. Don't bear me ill-will. And don't be afraid. I am going back to the grave again."

The Marquess stretched out his hand, as if to detain him; but, with a gesture, full of dignity and command, as well as imploration, the bent figure passed out.