It was a grievous error; and yet, if Mr. Challoner had lived, those few thousands would hardly have been so sorely missed. He was young in his profession, and if he had been spared, success would have come to him as to other men; but he was cut off unexpectedly in the prime of life, and Mrs. Challoner gave up her large house at Kensington, and settled at Glen Cottage with her three daughters, understanding that life was changed for her, and that they should have to be content with small means and few wants. Hitherto they had had sufficient; but of late there had been dark whispers concerning that invested money; things were not quite square and above-board; the integrity of the firm was doubted. Mr. Trinder, almost with tears in his eyes, begged Mrs. Challoner to be prudent and spend less. The crash which he had foreseen, and had vainly tried to avert, had come to-night. Gardiner & Fowler were bankrupt, and their greatest creditor, Mrs. Challoner, was ruined. "We cannot get our money. Mr. Trinder says we never shall. They have been paying their dividends correctly, keeping it up as a sort of blind, he says: but all the capital is eaten away. George Gardiner, too, your father's cousin, the man he trusted above every one,--he to defraud the widow and the fatherless, to take our money--my children's only portion--and to leave us beggared." And Mrs. Challoner, made tragical by this great blow, clasped her hands and looked at her girls with two large tears rolling down her face. "Mother, are you sure? is it quite as bad as that?" asked Nan; and then she kissed away the tears, and said something rather brokenly about having faith, and trying not to lose courage; then her voice failed her, and they all sat quiet together. CHAPTER VII. PHILLIS'S CATECHISM. A veil of silence fell over the little party. After the first few moments of dismay, conjecture, and exclamation, there did not seem to be much that any one could say. Each girl was busy with her own thoughts and private interpretation of a most sorrowful enigma. What were they to do? How were they to live without separation, and without taking a solitary plunge into an unknown and most terrifying world? Nan's frame of mind was slightly monotonous. What would Dick say, and how would this affect certain vague hopes she had lately cherished? Then she thought of Mr. Mayne, and shivered, and a sense of coldness and remote fear stole over her.