"Before I answer your question, will you answer one of mine? What have I done, Mrs. Mortomley, that your tone and manner have changed towards me so utterly? You are misjudging me in some way. You fancy because Leonora is poor, I shall not be so willing to help her as if she had been left well-dowered. Is it not so?" "'Conscience makes cowards of us all,'" remarked Dolly, with a bitter little laugh. "It is you who have changed. Poverty and money; these two things are the touchstones of love, esteem, friendship. Have I not seen it? Do I not know it? I was wrong to expect a miracle; but I did hope for better things from you." "And what have I done to forfeit your good opinion?" he asked. "Could a brother have taken more responsibility upon himself than I have done? I would have paid out that fellow downstairs, but you advised me not to part with money which might be useful to Leonora. Have not I told you I will see to her and the children? Is it not merely to save her annoyance I urge the necessity for her departure from this wretched house? Surely, you are hard to please?" "I am not at all hard to please, and you know that," she answered. "When first you heard of Mr. Werner's reverses, you were goodness itself; you were as utterly unworldly and disinterested as--well, as my own husband is. "But you had not then stood face to face with that ruin which overtakes a commercial man. A loss of income; the reduction of a household; having to live frugally, and dress plainly; these things never seem terrible to friends and acquaintances who are not called upon to practise such economy in their own persons. What has tried you is just what tries every one who is privileged to see the process by which men, unable to meet their engagements, are stripped of everything they possess. "That man in possession horrified you almost as much as he did Williams. Being brought into contact with Mr. Forde disgusted you. Lord Darsham began to wonder with how much of this sort of thing he might become connected, and, though quite willing to do his duty, he could not avoid thinking duty a very unpleasant necessity." "You are exhaustive, Mrs. Mortomley." "It is a subject I have studied," she said. "Do you suppose any human being could pass through all this, as I have done, and come out innocent and believing. The bulk of friends I class under two heads:--those who know, and those who do not know what ruin means. The first simply turn their backs on the ruined man altogether; the second ask him to dinner, or to stay with them for a week, a fortnight, or a month." "I am not going to ask my cousin to dinner, neither do I intend to turn my back on her," he remarked, unable, angry though he was, to avoid smiling at Dolly's sweeping assertions.