'I wish Jerry were here to help me,' sighed Lady Julia, as she lounged in a luxurious fauteuil in the beautiful drawing-room of Wilmothurst, with 'Cousin' Emily, on a dull afternoon of February, when the trees in the stately chase were dripping with moisture, and the reedy fens and lonesome marshes, where the bittern boomed and the heron waded, looked dreary, and the edges of the water-flags were stiff and white with frost. 'I would Jerry were here to help me with his advice. Not that his advice would help us much perhaps, Emily,' she added, querulously. 'Advice, Aunt Julia? When poor dear Jerry was here, he did nothing,' replied that young lady. 'And that was all he ever cared to do, Emily; but I have seen so little of Jerry since he joined the Rifles that I seem to be quite alone in the world.' And she sighed a little conventional sigh, while spreading her feather fan, though a large crystal screen was placed between her and the brilliant fire that burned in a grate of steel polished like silver. 'But matters have come to a crisis with us; through me, I fear,' she added. 'Through you, aunt?' 'Yes, unfortunately.' 'How--in what way?' 'Did you not see how I turned my back upon that minx, Miss Chevenix, at the Charity Bazaar last week; cut her dead indeed, and this is the result!' exclaimed Lady Julia, tossing from her contemptuously a letter she had recently received. 'What result?' asked Emily Wilmot, too languid to open the missive in question. 'Her father will wait for the interest on the mortgages no longer, and we are ruined! Even this house of Wilmothurst may have to pass to him, and we shall have to go--to go--' 'Where, aunt?' asked Emily, becoming roused now, her light blue eyes dilated with wonder, and her nose seeming more _retroussé_ than ever. 'God alone knows where; to some obscure watering-place probably. If this insolent fellow, who certainly has not been paid for some years, would only wait till Jerry returns from the Gold Coast, and some arrangements could be made,' continued Lady Julia, in her plaintive and bleating kind of voice. 'House, lands, and all will go to Chevenix, and only a few acres will be left us. We are beggars,' she continued, with angry querulousness, but without altering a line of her smooth, handsome, and passionless face. 'We have nothing of our own--all will become his.' 'But surely, aunt, you have friends. There is Lord Twiseldown--there is Sir Jasper Dehorsey.' 'I cannot stoop to ask, and who would lend me thousands--not even money-lenders now, for there is nothing left in the shape of land to borrow on. Wilmothurst will become the property of this upstart farmer's son out and out. Jerry will have to give up everything but his commission, and go to India no doubt. Fortunately he has that resource left him; but I--I shall no longer be able to maintain even you, Emily.'