"There has been some great mistake about this matter, Mrs. Asherill," she said after a pause. "I never received that fifty pounds; and I should like to have an opportunity of speaking to Mr. Asherill on the subject. Ask him to call here next Saturday. Tell him I shall take it as a great kindness if he will favour me with a few minutes' conversation. I have no doubt," added Dolly a little hypocritically, for she wanted to send poor Mrs. Asherill away happy, "we shall be able to arrive at some understanding." And she stretched out her hand, which Mrs. Asherill took and pressed; then, moved by some impulse she could scarcely have defined, she stooped down and touched the lips of Mortomley's wife, murmuring, "I wish--I wish, my dear, you were strong and well again." "Do not fret about me," was the quiet reply. "I shall be well--quite well, some day." For the remainder of that week Dolly employed herself at intervals in writing. She was always jotting down memoranda; always asking Esther questions about what was done and left undone after their departure. She wrote to Lang, and received a perfect manuscript from him in reply. She wrote to Mr. Leigh, asking him to search the 'Daily News' of a particular week in a particular year for an advertisement which she specified, and by return of post that was forwarded. Finally, she sent a note to Mr. Asherill, directed to Salisbury House, and then she waited patiently for Saturday. On the evening of that day Mr. Asherill presented himself at the cottage. He came intending, spite of the character for sanctity he maintained, to tell many a falsehood in explanation of aught which might seem strange to Mrs. Mortomley; indeed, to put the case plainly, _any_ falsehood which might best serve his turn. His wife had, of course, communicated to him all Mr. Mortomley's wife had said to her, and he walked over to the cottage, thinking how, with his best manner, he might humbug the little woman Mr. Douglas had taken under his fatherly care. But Dolly's greeting surprised him. "Thank you very much for coming, Mr. Asherill," she said, holding out her hand; "I think we may shake hands now, for do you know, I fancy I am at the present moment a better Christian than yourself." "It fills my soul with joy to hear you say so," he was beginning, when she interrupted him. "I want to speak to you on business very important to myself," she said. "I want you to do something for me; I did something for you the other day--I kept silence when speech would have made your wife miserable. I did not show her John Jones' letter; I did not tell her of the first advertisement in the 'Daily News;' I did not even try to unmask you; so having established a claim on your gratitude, I want you to gratify the request of a dying woman, for I am dying," she added, speaking with the utmost calmness. "God bless me!" exclaimed Mr. Asherill, surprised for once out of his worldly and religious conventionality.