"Then you ought not! It was wrong, so soon! I don't care what you have found. The money isn't so much as uncle Arthur fancies, I suppose. What if it is not? What do I care? He has done harm enough with his meddling. He shall have no voice in my affairs now. I shall never be able to forgive him for—yesterday!" She had to pause and think before saying "yesterday." Her twenty-first birthday seemed so long ago. "He was not to blame—wilfully." "He was to blame! He knew better, or he ought to have known. But never mind that now. I only want you to say what must be said, and have done with it." "I cannot give full particulars yet. There has been—no time. My father's affairs are—have been for years—in a state of complication—embarrassment. How much so I have never guessed. The crash must have come in—in any case. It has been staved off by—by means of—" Then a break. "Ruin to us all!" followed abruptly. "To—us all!" She laid a slight stress on the pronoun. "Yes." "I don't think I understand." Nigel was again hardly able to speak, and drops stood thickly like beads over his forehead. Fulvia felt bewildered. Ruin to them all! Did that mean—to her? Was she included? In her wildest dreams this had somehow never come up as a possibility. Her money had always in imagination remained secure, only perhaps a little diminished from the Carden-Cox estimate. Her money had always been waiting to supply deficiencies for other people. She said again, "I don't understand." It was not in human nature at that moment to insist on hearing no more. "Ruin to whom?" she asked. "Absolute ruin to us! Hardly less to you." "And—my forty thousand pounds—are—" "Gone!" He said the one word clearly as before; then a change of mood overmastered him; he sat down and covered his face with both hands. What wonder? His father not ten hours dead!—and already to have found out that father in a course of action which must cover his name with dishonour. Trust betrayed! Trust money appropriated! A heavier blow could scarcely have fallen upon the children of Albert Browning, brought up to regard him with loving reverence. Fulvia could not look on unmoved. Tears rushed to her eyes. She forgot the uncertainty of her own position, forgot how words and acts might be misconstrued. They were boy and girl again—brother and sister—he as he used to be, a little the younger in character, turning to her for guidance, and she—"Nigel, I can't bear you to feel it so!" she cried with a sob, coming to his side, and then she sat down, leaning towards him. "What does the money matter to me, except that I wanted to help you all? It is worse for you, of course—worse to know—But he did not mean it! He never meant it! It has been some accident—something he could not help. We will never think a hard thought of him, or hear a hard word said. Somebody else was to blame; not dear padre—always so good and kind to me. Only don't mind—don't distress yourself—please don't think anything of it."