According to promise, Picard called on Sir Henry at his house in town, and was fortunate enough to find the baronet at home, but being ushered into a room on the ground-floor, smelling strongly of tobacco-smoke, his heart misgave him that he was about to fail in the chief object of his visit, and that Helen had gone out. He was further discomfited by his host's information that she was at Blackgrove, with no intention of returning to London till next spring. The adventurer's brow clouded. He had but little time for delay, and felt, to use his own expression, that the moment had arrived when he must force the running, come with a rush, and win on the post the best way he could.

Affecting, therefore, an air of deep concern, he sat himself down opposite Sir Henry, who, wrapped in velvet, occupied the easiest of chairs, with a French novel on his knee, and began to apologise for disturbing him.

"But I wanted to see you," said Picard, in a more subdued tone than usual, "because, in trying to do you a good turn, I've got you into a mess. It is fortunate you are a man of position, and—and—of means, Sir Henry, so that this is a matter of mere temporary inconvenience, but it is equally distressing to me, I assure you, just the same."

"What do you mean?" said Sir Henry, turning pale, while the French novel fluttered to his feet.

"Simply, that in following my lead about those shares I fear you have come to grief. Not to the extent I have, of course, but still enough to make you very shy of taking my advice in money matters again. I shall pull through myself, eventually, well enough; but I had rather lose every shilling I possess than that a friend of mine should sustain injury by my advice or example."

The nobility of this sentiment was thrown away on Sir Henry, who swore an ugly oath, and for a moment seemed in danger of losing his habitual self-command.

"Why, you told me those cursed Colorados were a certainty!" he exclaimed; "'a clear gain of fifty per cent.,' were your very words, no questions asked, and no risk to run. You're not a baby, my good fellow! Who was it that took you in, I should like to know? He must have his wits about him, that gentleman!"

"I can only repeat I did everything for the best," answered Picard loftily. "I trust you were not in it very deep!"

"Deep!" growled the baronet. "I don't know what you call deep. I counted on those cursed shares to pay off all my pressing liabilities, and to square me with you in particular. Now that one card has gone the whole house will tumble down, of course. It's always the way. Hang it, Picard! you oughtn't to have been so cock-sure, man. Well, it's no use talking. I'm simply floored, that's all: and how I'm to be picked up this time beats my comprehension altogether."

"You have friends, Sir Henry," said Picard. "Plenty of them."

"Plenty of them!" echoed Sir Henry. "Staunch friends and true, who would dine with me, bet with me, shoot with me, nay, some of whom would even back me up in a row, or pull for me while hounds were running if I got a fall, but who would see me d——d before they lent me a shilling, or put their names to a bill for eighteen pence."

"That may be true enough with some of your swell acquaintance," replied Picard, "but you mustn't lump us all in together and ticket us 'rotten.' I myself am ready, now, this moment, to do my utmost to assist you. Sir Henry, I am a real friend."

"If you know my liabilities, by Heaven you are!" exclaimed the baronet, with a sarcastic grin.

"I don't care a cent for your liabilities!" said the other, as indeed he might safely say; and perhaps Sir Henry's knowledge of the world attributed this generosity to the recklessness of one who had nothing to lose. "I don't care what they are, I'll see you through them. I am your friend—your true friend—Sir Henry—I am more than a friend. The dearest wish of my heart is to be in the same boat with yourself and your family, sink or swim."

In an instant, the baronet's whole demeanour changed to one of studied and even guarded courtesy. He rose from his chair, stood with his back to the empty fireplace, and inclined politely to his visitor.

"I do not quite understand," said he. "Pray explain."

Picard hesitated. There was something embarrassing in the other's attitude. It combined civility, defiance, vigilance, all the ingredients, indeed, of an armed neutrality. At last he got out the words, "Your daughter, Sir Henry—Miss Hallaton."

"Stop a moment," interrupted the baronet, still in those guarded, courteous tones; "how can my daughter be concerned in our present business?"

"Simply," answered the other, fairly driven into a corner, "that I had meant—that I had intended—in short, that I had hoped you might be induced to entertain—I mean, to listen favourably. Hang it! Sir Henry, I am devotedly attached to your daughter—there!"

Sir Henry drew himself up. "You do Miss Hallaton a great honour," said he, very stiffly, "and one I beg to decline most distinctly on her behalf. This is a subject which admits of no further discussion between you and me."

"Are you in earnest?" exclaimed Picard fiercely. "Do you know what you are doing? Have you counted the cost of making me your enemy? Sir Henry, you must surely have lost your head or your temper?"

"Neither, I assure you," answered the other, with provoking calmness; adding, while he laid his hand on the bell-pull—"May I offer you a glass of sherry, and—and—bitters, before you go?"

For the life of him, he could not resist a sarcastic emphasis, while he named that wholesome tonic, nor could he help smiling, as Picard, losing all self-control, flung out of the room, with no more courteous leave-taking than a consignment of the proffered refreshment to a temperature where it would have proved acceptable in the highest degree.

But no sooner had the street-door closed on his visitor, than Sir Henry shook himself, as it were, out of a life's lethargy, and seemed to become a new man. It was his nature to rise against a difficulty; and, although he had never before had such a souse in the cold waters of adversity, he felt braced and strengthened by the plunge. He sat down at once to his writing-table, and immersed himself in calculations as to liabilities, and means of meeting them. Ruin stared him in the face. He was convinced he had nothing to hope from Picard's forbearance, with whom he was inextricably mixed up in money matters. He saw clearly that the latter would use every legal engine in his power to further his revenge; yet Sir Henry's courage failed him not a jot, and he only cursed the scoundrel's impudence in thinking himself good enough for Helen, vowing the while he would be a match for them all, and fight through yet.

Then he wrote many letters to solicitors, money-lenders, and private friends; amongst others, one to Helen, and one to Mrs. Lascelles. It is with this last alone we have to do.

That lady is sitting, somewhat disconsolate and lonely, in the pretty boudoir at No. 40. The bullfinch is moulting, and sulky in the extreme; the pug has been dismissed for the only misdemeanour of which he is ever guilty—indigestion, followed by sickness; the post has just brought Sir Henry Hallaton's letter; Mrs. Lascelles is dissolved in tears; and Goldthred, who has not been near her for a fortnight, is suddenly announced.

All the morning, all the drive hither in a Hansom cab, all the way up-stairs, he has been revolving how he can best carry out Kate Cremorne's precept—"Il faut se faire valoir;" but at the top step the loyalty of a true, disinterested love asserts itself, and he would fain fall prone at the feet of his mistress, bidding her trample him in the dust if she had a mind.

Seeing her in tears, he turned hot and cold, dropped his hat, knocked down a spidery table in trying to recover it, and finally shook hands with the woman he loved stiffly and pompously, as if she had been his bitterest enemy.

The grasp of her hand too seemed less cordial, her manner less kindly than usual. Goldthred, who had yet to learn that the fortress never mans its walls with so much menace as on the eve of surrender, felt chilled, dispirited, even hurt; but, because of her distress, staunch and unwavering to the backbone.

"You find me very unhappy," said she, drying her eyes (gently, so as not to make them unbecomingly red). "Why have you never been to see me?"

This, turning on him abruptly, and with a degree of displeasure that ought to have raised his highest hopes.

"I've been away," he stammered, "in the North on business. I—I didn't know you wanted me."

"Oh, it's not that!" she answered pettishly. "Of course, one can't expect people to put off business, or pleasure, or anything else for the sake of their friends. What's the use of friends? What's the use of caring for anything or anybody? I wish I didn't. I shouldn't be so upset now!"

In his entire participation of her sorrow, he quite lost his own embarrassment.

"Can I do anything?" he exclaimed. "There's the will, you know, even if there isn't the power."

"Nothing, that I can see," she answered drearily. "Here's a letter from Sir Henry Hallaton. They're completely ruined, he tells me; a regular smash! What is to become of them? I'm so wretched, particularly about Helen."

She put her handkerchief to her face once more, but watched her listener narrowly, nevertheless. It did not escape her that his countenance changed and fell, as if he had been stung.

He recovered himself bravely, though.

"That is distressing enough," said he, "and sounds a bad business, no doubt. Still, it is only a question of money, I suppose. It might have been worse."

"Worse!" she repeated, with impatience. "I don't see how. From what he says, it seems they won't have a roof to cover them—hardly bread to eat! And what can I do for him? I can't pay off his mortgages, and buy him back Blackgrove, as if it was a baby-house. It does seem so hard! It makes me hate everything and everybody!"

Goldthred's only reply to this rational sentiment was to rise from his chair, button his coat, and place himself in a determined attitude on the hearth-rug.

"You seem very miserable," said he; and the man's voice was so changed that she started as if a stranger had come into the room. "I think I can understand why—no, don't explain anything, Mrs. Lascelles, but listen to me—you are unhappy. To the best of my power I will help you. Somebody that you—well—that you like very much is in difficulties. If I can extricate him, I will. You needn't hate everything or everybody any longer," he added, with rather a sad smile; "and you may believe that, though people do not put off their business nor their pleasure for them, they can sometimes sacrifice their interests to their friends."

How noble he seemed standing there—so kind, so good, so utterly unselfish and true! How she loved him! She had long guessed it. She knew it too surely now. Yet she could not forbear taking the last arrow from her quiver, and sending it home to his honest, unsuspecting heart.

"It is very kind of you, Mr. Goldthred," said she, "to speak as you do, particularly as you always mean what you say; but, though I often fancied you liked her, I had no idea your attachment to Miss Hallaton was so strong as all that!"

He turned very pale, and stooped over the moulting bullfinch, without speaking; then raised his head, looking—as she had never seen him look before—resolved, even stern, thoughtful, saddened, yet not the least unkind; and the voice, that had trembled awhile ago, was firm and decided now.

"If you are joking, Mrs. Lascelles," said he, "the jest is unworthy of you, and unfair on me. If you really think what you say, it is time you were undeceived. Miss Hallaton is no more to me than a young lady in whom you take an interest. For her father I am prepared to make any sacrifice, because I think you—Mrs. Lascelles, will you forgive what I am going to say?"

"I don't know," she answered, smiling very brightly, considering that the tears still glittered in her eyes. "I might be more deeply offended than you suppose. What if you were going to say you think I am in love with Sir Henry Hallaton?"

"I think you are in love with Sir Henry Hallaton," he repeated very gravely. "I think your happiness has long been dependent on his society. I think you would marry him to-morrow if he asked you. I think he would ask you to-day if his position admitted of it. I do not live a great deal in the world, Mrs. Lascelles, and I dare say I am rather dull in a general way; but the stupidest people can see things that affect their interests or their happiness; and I have often watched every word and look of yours, when you thought perhaps I had no more perception, no more feeling, than that marble chimney-piece. Sometimes with a sore heart enough; but that is all over now! Ought I to have told you long ago, or ought I to have held my tongue for ever? I don't know; but I need not tell you now, that from the day Mr. Groves introduced me to you, at the Thames Regatta—I dare say you've forgotten all about it—I have admired you, and—and—cared for you more than anything in the world. You're too bright and too beautiful and too good for me, I know; but that don't prevent my wanting to see you happy, and happy you shall be, Mrs. Lascelles, if everything I can do has the power to make you so!"

His voice may have failed him somewhat during this simple little declaration, but seemed steady enough when he finished; and it could not, therefore, have been from sympathy with his emotion that the tears were again rising fast to his listener's blue eyes.

"I remember it perfectly," she sobbed. "You were talking to a fat woman in a hideous yellow gown. Why do you say I don't?"

"Remember what?" he asked innocently, not being quite conversant with a manoeuvre much practised by ladies in difficulties, and similar to that resource which is termed in the prize-ring "sparring for wind."

"Why, the first time I met you," she answered. "You're not the only person who has a memory and feelings and all that. I know you must think me a brute, and so I am; but still, I'm not quite a woman of stone!"

"I have told you what I think of you," said he very quietly. "Now tell me what I can do for you, and him."

"Do you mean," she asked, peeping slyly out of her little useless handkerchief, "that you would actually give me up to somebody else, and part with your money, which is always a criterion of sincerity, for such an object? Mr. Goldthred, is that what you call love?"

"I only want you to be happy," said he. "I don't understand much about love and flirtation; and these things people make such a talk about. I want to see you happy. No, not that; for I should avoid seeing you, at least just at first; but I should like to know you were happy, and that it was my doing."

He turned, and leaned his elbows on the chimney-piece, not to look in the glass; for his face was buried in his hands, so that she had some difficulty in attracting his attention. It was not a romantic action; but she gave a gentle pull at his coat-tails.

"You can make me happy," she whispered, with a deep and very becoming blush. "I don't think it will be at all inconvenient or unpleasant to you, only—only—you know I can't exactly suggest it first."

He turned as if he was shot. With white face and parted lips, never man looked more astonished, while he gasped out,

"And you wouldn't marry Sir Henry Hallaton?"

She shook her head with a very bewitching smile.

"And you would marry me?" he continued, hardly daring to believe it was not all a dream.

"You've never asked me," was the reply; but he was on the sofa at her side by this time, whispering his answer so closely in her ear, that I doubt if either heard it, while both knew pretty well what it meant; and though their subsequent conversation was carried on in a strange mixture of broken sentences, irrational expressions, and idiotic dumb show, it took less than ten minutes to arrive at a definite conclusion, entailing on Goldthred the necessity of immediate correspondence with his nearest relatives, and a visit to Doctors' Commons at no far distant date.

But, happy as he felt, breathing elixir, treading upon air, while walking home to dress for dinner, he found time for the purchase of such a beautiful fan as can hardly be got for money, and sent it forthwith to Kate Cremorne, with the following line written in pencil on his card—Il faut se faire valoir.