Guy knew she would do that, and he encouraged her in the plan, and went himself to Belvidere, where he was a stranger, and made all needful inquiries, and reported to Magdalen. Mrs. Frank had already left Millbank with her hundred thousand, not a dollar of which could Frank’s creditors touch, or Frank either, for that matter. Bell held her own with an iron grasp, and so well had she managed that none of the principal had been spent, and when the final crash came and her husband told her he was ruined, it found her prepared and ready to abdicate at any moment The old home in Boston was sold, but she was able to buy a better one, and she did so, and with her father and sister took possession at once. To do Bell justice, she carried nothing from Millbank but her clothing and jewelry. The rest belonged to Frank’s creditors, and she considered that it would be stealing to take it. This she said several times for the benefit of Mrs. Walter Scott, who, less scrupulous than her daughter-in-law, was quietly filling her trunks and boxes with articles of value, silver and china, and linen and bedding, and curtains, and whatever she could safely stow away. Mrs. Walter Scott was about to buy a house, too, a cosy little cottage with handsome grounds, just out of New York, on the New Haven road. She, too, had managed well, as she supposed. She had speculated in stocks and _oil_ until she thought herself worth forty thousand dollars. There was some of it lying in the bank, where she could draw it at any time, and some of it still in _oil_, which she was assured she could sell at an advance upon the original price. So, what with the forty thousand and what with the household goods she would take from Millbank, she felt quite comfortable in her mind, and bore the shock of her son’s failure with great equanimity and patience. She was glad, she said, of something to break up the terrible life they were leading at Millbank. For more than a year, and indeed ever since Bell’s return from abroad, scarcely a word had been exchanged between herself and Mrs. Franklin Irving, and each lady had an establishment of her own, with a separate table, a separate retinue of servants, and a separate carriage. There was no other way of keeping the peace, and in desperation Frank himself had suggested this arrangement, though he knew that the entire support of both families would necessarily fall on him. But Frank was reckless, and did not greatly care. He was going to destruction any way, he said to Roger, who expostulated with him and warned him of the sure result of such extravagance. “He was going to ruin, and he might as well go on a grand scale, and better, too, if that would keep peace between _the women_.”