"Yes, dear, the whole of it," she answered, determined he should know the worst at last. "My God!" said Mortomley, and the expression sounded strange, coming from the lips of a man who rarely gave vent to any vehemence of feeling. "What a fool I have been! what a wicked, short-sighted, senseless fool! why don't you speak hardly to me, Dolly--I who have ruined you and Lenore?" She stooped down and kissed him. "Archie, I don't care a straw about the money; I did at first, and I was afraid, but I am not afraid now; if only you will be content and brave, and ready to believe small beginnings sometimes make great endings." But he made no reply. He only rose, and walking to the door flung it open, and stood looking out over the pleasant landscape. Dolly feigned not to notice him. She went to her work-table and began turning over her tapes and cottons with restless fingers, waiting, waiting for her husband to speak. Then in a moment there came a tremendous crash, and Mortomley was lying on the matting which covered the floor, like one dead. CHAPTER VIII. MR. WERNER ASKS A FAVOUR. About the very happiest hour of Dolly Mortomley's life was one in which her husband, still weak and languid, after watching her gliding about his sick-room, said--feebly it is true, but still as his wife had not heard him speak since the time of his first attack at Homewood--"My poor Dolly." It was the voice of the olden time--of the never-to-be-forgotten past, when if she made burdens he was strong enough to carry them. In that pleasant country place the cloud which had for so long a time obscured his mental vision, was rent asunder, and the man's faculties that had so long lain dormant, were given back to him once more. Dolly was right. No one save herself knew how ill Mortomley had been during all that weary time at Homewood, during the long sickness at Clapton, during all the months which followed when superficial observers deemed him well.