"Take my loving message to my sister," said Leigh, ignoring his companion's other remark, "that I beg she will come home now at once." "Because I'm going down?" pleaded Claud. "Yes," said Leigh, gravely, "because you are going down." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A year and a half glided by, and Kate Wilton had become full mistress of her property, and other matters remained, as the lawyers say, "in statu quo," save that Jenny was back with her brother. James Wilton was very much broken, and his son was beginning to be talked of as a rising agriculturist. John Garstang was at Boulogne, and his stepson had married a wealthy Australian widow in Sydney. Jenny had again and again tried to urge her brother to propose to Kate, but in vain. "It is so stupid of you, dear," she said. "I know she'd say yes to you, directly. Of course any girl would if you asked her." "Yes, I'm a noble specimen of humanity," said Leigh, dryly. "I believe you're the proudest and most sensitive man that ever lived," cried Jenny, angrily. "One of them, sis." "And next time I shall advise her to propose to you. You couldn't refuse." "You are too late, dear," he said, gravely, as he recalled a letter he had received a month before, in which he had been reproached for ignoring the writer's existence, and forcing her to humble herself and write. There were words in that letter which seemed burned into his brain and he had a bitter fight to hold himself aloof. For in simple, heart-appealing language she had said: "Am I never to see you and tell you how I pray nightly for him who twice saved my life, and enabled me to live and say I am still worthy of being called his friend?" Pride--honourable feeling--true manhood--whatever it was--he fought and won, for in his unworldly way he told himself that in his early struggles for a position he could not ask a rich heiress to be his wife. "I know," Jenny often said, "that she wishes she had hardly a penny in the world." It does not fall to many of us to have our fondest wishes fulfilled, but Kate Wilton had hers, though in a way which brought misery to thousands, though safety to more who have lived since. For the great commercial crisis burst upon London. One of the great banks collapsed, and dragged others, like falling card houses, in its wake. Among others, Wilton's Joint Stock Bank came to the ground, and in its ruin the two-thirds left of Kate's money went out like so much burning paper, leaving only a few tiny sparks to scintillate in the tinder, and disappear. "Oh, how horrible!" cried Jenny, when the news reached the Leighs. "What a horrid shame! I must go and see her now she is in such trouble." "No," said Leigh, drawing himself up with a sigh of relief, "let me go first."