Hearing which sentence Mr. Swanland stared. He had never before seen Mortomley roused. He did not know each man has his weak point, and that Mortomley's pregnable spot lay close to the colours himself had begotten. Homewood, his business, his house, his furniture, his horses, his carriages, his plant, his connection, Mortomley had yielded without a struggle, but his mental children he could not so relinquish, nor would he. Upon that point Mortomley, generally pliable, was firm, and consequently, after an amount of bickering only a degree less unpleasant to the trustee than to the bankrupt, Mortomley shook the dust of Salisbury House off his feet, declaring his intention of never entering it again. As he passed down the staircase he met Mr. Asherill. "Ah! Mr. Mortomley, and _how_ are _you_?" cried that gentleman with effusion. "Getting on pretty well, eh? Had your discharge, of course? No. Why they ought to have given it to you long ago. So glad to see you looking so well. _Good_-bye, God bless you." Never in his life had Mortomley felt more tempted to do anything than he did at that moment to pitch the old hypocrite downstairs. "My discharge!" he exclaimed, when he was recounting the incidents of the day to his wife, "and the vagabond knew it was never intended I should have it. Looking well! why, just as I was going out into the street, Gibbons ran up against me. "'What's the matter, Mortomley?' he said, 'you look like a ghost,' and he made me go back into the passage, and sent for some brandy, and he hailed a cab, and remarking, 'Perhaps you have not got much money loose about you, take this, and you can pay me when you are next in town, six months hence will do,' he forced his purse into my hand. I used to think hardly of Gibbons, but he is not a bad fellow as times go." "You will never go to Salisbury House again, Archie?" she asked. "Never, Dolly. Never, that I declare most positively." "Cannot we go into the country, then, for a time?" she suggested. "I should like to go anywhere away from London," he answered. After a short time she led the conversation back to his interview with Mr. Swanland. "I cannot imagine," she said, "how it happens that amongst the papers that went from Homewood they never happened to find any of your formulæ." "It would have puzzled them to do that," he answered, opening his tired eyes and looking at her with an expression she could not exactly understand. "You must have had formulæ," she persisted. "Well, yes," he agreed; "perhaps you think they extended to eight volumes of manuscript bound in morocco. You poor little woman, it would be a bad thing for colour-makers if trade secrets were not more easily carried than all that comes to. Look," and taking out his pocket-book he handed her a couple of sheets of note-paper, "every receipt of mine worth having is written down there; they are all clear enough to me, though if I lost them to-morrow they would prove Greek to any other person."