Doris read the letter over and over again before she could quite realise all that it meant. She was nineteen years old, had received a fairly good education, and now her parents had forsaken her, leaving her entirely to her own resources, except for the command that she should go to London to Mrs. Anderson’s old friend, Miss Earnshaw. Doris had never been to London, and she had never stayed with Miss Earnshaw, though the latter came to be at the hydro at Askern every year, and never left without visiting them for a few days. She was rich and generous, and Doris knew that she would be willing to give her a home. "But oh," said the girl to herself, "it is hard to have to leave here in this way--never to return--under a cloud, too, a dreadfully black cloud!" And she sighed deeply, for it was difficult for her to understand how her father could possibly have speculated with money that was not his own. He was a reserved man, who had never spoken of business matters to her, and she was a child yet in knowledge of the world, and did not comprehend such things as speculating on the Stock Exchange; but she knew that he had done wrong--for had not her mother acknowledged that?--and realised, with the keenest pain, that Bernard Cameron, her lover, was ruined by it, absolutely ruined, for he could not continue his career at Oxford, and the capital with which he meant to start his school, afterwards, was all lost, too. Moreover, they could not marry, for he was penniless, and she a beggar, going now to beg for a home in London. All thoughts of a marriage between them must be over. It was a bright dream vanished, a castle in the air pulled down and shattered. "I suppose we must prepare the luncheon, Miss Doris?" said Susan, when, at length, in answer to her persistent knocking at the door, Doris turned the key to admit her, and as she spoke the woman cast an inquiring glance toward the letter in Doris’s hand. "Lunch? Oh, yes, Susan! Mr. Hamilton, Mrs. Cameron, and the others will be coming--although----" The poor girl broke down and wept. "Don’t, Miss Doris! Don’t cry so, dear!" said Susan, pityingly, wiping her own tears away as she spoke. "Master and mistress may return in time to sit down with their guests." "No, they won’t. They’ll never come back!" exclaimed Doris, with another burst of sobs. "What do they say in the letter?" asked the old servant. "It’s awful!" replied Doris. "Just see"--she passed the letter, with a trembling hand--"see what mother has written to me. _You_ may read it, Susan, though no one else shall. There’s a message for you in it about the house." Susan adjusted her glasses and began to read the letter with some difficulty, for tears were in her eyes, and she had to take off her spectacles again and again in order to wipe them away. "Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" she ejaculated more than once, as she read the letter. "That I should have lived to see this day! My poor mistress! What she must be suffering!"