"Oh, the money was not mine. It was Sir Francis Forcus's money. I asked him for it. You can tell them I sent it, Mr. Gibbon; but tell them no more. Sir Francis wished it to be a secret between him and me." "Oh!" Gibbon said, and roughly shook her hand from his arm. "You don't believe me?" "I believe you fast enough; oh, yes." "Then why are you angry?" "You might have come to me. Why didn't you come to me?" "Oh, I don't know," Deleah said. The several reasons she could have given it seemed kinder to withhold. He pounced upon her, his eyes blazing. "I don't like these '_secrets_' between a man and a girl." Deleah drew back with a little offence. "If you knew at all what Sir Francis is like you would not say such a thing as that, Mr. Gibbon." "What is he like?" "Infinitely--infinitely above everything that is not kind and generous--and noble." "He is just like any other man, except that he has more money." Deleah put on her little air of dignity. "I thank you for telling me everything about my brother," she said. "I am so relieved that there was nothing worse to hear." He watched her as she walked across the gloomy little square of landing and entered the other room. When she held her small head so poised on its long graceful throat, when the corners of her lips were ever so little turned down, the small rounded chin turned up, and the wonderful black eyelashes swept her cheeks he was afraid of her, little bit of a girl of less than half his age as she was; a girl who had been a child but two years ago, when he had come to the house. A girl whose lips as far as he had ever heard had never spoken one ungentle word; a girl who had pity on drowning flies, and carefully turned away her foot from the abject worm. But then he was always trembling before her, either with love or fear. The impulse to tell her that the purse-proud brewer was not the only man who had done the wretched brother a service for her sake possessed him. The few pounds he had put, in order that he might find them there, in Bernard's room, had been infinitely more to him than the fifty pounds to Sir Francis Forcus. And he was one who saved his money anxiously for the end he had in view. Would she call him "kind and generous and noble" if he told her? He more than doubted it. "We can't possibly walk about with Bernard in the dress of a private soldier," Bessie was saying when Deleah returned to the sitting-room. "We have come down, mama, I know, but we have not come down so low as that; and Bernard can't expect it of us." "I shall buy him off, if I have to sell the clothes off my back," Mrs. Day said, oblivious of the fact that her wardrobe in the market might perhaps have fetched the sum of thirty shillings. "I would not be in too great a hurry, mama." "You think nothing about the sufferings of your poor brother, Deleah. My darling son."