A faint chuckle came from the gloom by the door. "_Soh!_ you have prains! Mr. Cruttenden, I ought to be angry, I ought to tell you many things, but I have searched long for one to believe in me. I need him. Let this be--you have won three hundred pounds. I give you this per year as my clerk. You accept?" It was all over in a moment. The blackbird ceased his song, and as Ted Cruttenden hurriedly dressed for dinner his head was in a whirl. This was a chance indeed. By Christmas he might stand on more equal ground. And after Christmas? His fancy ran riot in pink satin and diamonds. But, when he left with Mr. Hirsch next morning, the latter was in a towering bad temper. Lord Blackborough was a fool. He had refused to listen to reason, and Mrs. Tressilian was no better. They had both of them declined to be mixed up any further with the hotel, and would not even let him buy them out. The insurance had no doubt been made in accordance with business principles, but---- "He will divest himself of every farthing in two years if he goes on being so _verdammlich gerecht_. Yes! I give him two years to be a pauper," said poor Mr. Hirsch, and then his eyes positively filled with tears as he considered how all his efforts to secure a competency for Helen had failed. CHAPTER VIII It was early autumn, and Aura was standing in the garden, looking more like a Botticelli angel than ever, for her face was mutinous, the very curls about her temples and ears all crisped and gold-edged as she defied even the sunlight. She was engaged in an argument with Martha, who, in Mr. Sylvanus Smith's brief yearly absences on the work of the Socialistic Congress, still attempted an authority which she had once held undisputed. "Well, I wouldn't, not if it was ever so," asserted the worthy woman, her face aflame with righteous indignation. "Mr. Meredith, the rector, he know his part, an' being unbaptized there won't be no funeral, so what's the use of flowers?" Aura's eyebrows almost met in a sudden frown. "You don't mean that they will refuse----" "I don't know nothin', Miss H'Aura," interrupted Martha; "only what I hear tell. I don't 'old with baptism, nor yet with burials, specially the penny things they has hereabout. I don't want no halfpence to help bury me. I ain't like the folk nowadays, as is that restless they don't know where they'll lie, much less where they'll go to when they're dead. But I do hear it said that there'll be a fuss, becos the Calvinists wouldn't baptize the babby, hoping to get hold o' the name o' the father, for it _was_ a sin and a shame, her not bein', as it were, all there, an' now the rector'll object to a unbaptized, except in the odd corner where they puts the 'fellow deceased.' No, it ain't the sort of thing for you to be mixing yourself up with, Miss H'Aura. Them lovely lilies'd be ashamed o' your taking them to that gurl Gwen."