[Illustration: "Is Mr. Landor not well? There can't be much the matter with him, or she would not be out. Besides, she seemed just like her usual self. Colin, do speak out. Make haste."] "What? Do tell me!" "The Landors—" "Is Mr. Landor not well? There can't be much the matter with him, or she would not be out. Besides, she seemed just like her usual self. Colin, do speak out. Make haste." "My dear, you allow me no opportunity. Mrs. Landor—" "Yes. Go on! Make haste! O dear, you men are so slow!" "Mrs. Landor—" "Yes, I hear! Oh, make haste!" "—Has lost pretty nearly everything she has." [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XII GENUINE! MRS. MACKENZIE had to sit down, absolutely panting under the blow, and for once without words, as her husband gave a few particulars. It appeared that the Landors' affairs had been for some years in an involved condition, unknown to many of their most intimate friends. Losses here and embarrassments there dated nearly, though not quite, so far back as their marriage. The prosperous widow chosen by Mr. Landor for his wife had been since by no means so prosperous as was commonly supposed. But inasmuch as he had chosen her for herself, and not for her money, this fact had had no power to touch their happiness. They had hoped to emerge in the end from their difficulties. And in the ordinary course of events, the hope might have been fulfilled. Now however, at one blow, the main bulk of Mrs. Landor's possessions was swept away by the collapse of the great Company in which most of her money was embarked. An immediate sale of the estate was inevitable, and the utmost that it could be expected to bring in would be swallowed up by previously-existing liabilities. "The extraordinary thing is that nobody should have expected anything of the sort! No one seems to have so much as guessed what was coming. If you had asked me about that Company, I could have declared that it was almost as staunch as the Bank of England." Mr. Mackenzie looked back to his own haunting fears, as partly expressed to Euphrasia, about the bank with which he was himself closely connected, in a kind of wonder. Clear vision had come suddenly, and he realised now the futility, the needlessness, of his fears. At this instant, the imaginations which had made him wretched for months past looked absolutely absurd, the mere fruit of a disorganised nervous system, with no positive foundation in fact. That which he had so feared for himself, and for those dependent on him, had not come, might never come. But the blow which none had foretold for the Landors had fallen with startling abruptness. He woke out of a dream to the sound of his wife's voice:— "Do tell me! What are you thinking about? Do pray tell me. What will they have to live on?" "My dear, I fear almost nothing—beyond Mr. Landor's stipend." "A stipend of eighty-five pounds a year!"