Her dry lips moved, but made no sound. She clasped her hands once more before her face. Heaven knows how desperate was the effort that she made. It is not such an easy matter to borrow twenty thousand pounds; even though the borrower may be young and beautiful, and accustomed to perpetual adoration. “Miss Hillary, you speak of help--needing help--from _me_. For mercy’s sake, tell me how I can help you. Do you think there is anything upon earth that would give me such pride and delight as to be of service to you?” The enthusiasm of the moment lighted up Francis Tredethlyn’s countenance like a sudden glow of summer sunshine. Maude uncovered her face and looked at him, and saw at once that her cause was gained; her father’s preserver was found. She had not counted in vain upon Francis Tredethlyn. “I want you to lend papa twenty thousand pounds,” she said; “I know that he will repay you honourably. He has some difficulties--terrible difficulties in his business,--but the loan of twenty thousand pounds would smooth them all away. I know that you are very, very rich, Mr. Tredethlyn, and that you can afford to lend such a sum of money, or I should never have dared----” “You would not have dared, Miss Hillary? Oh, can you doubt that I would give the last sixpence I have in the world, the last drop of my heart’s-blood, to save you from one pang? Twenty thousand pounds! Take forty--fifty thousand--the utmost farthing of my fortune, if you will; squander it--throw it into the river yonder, if the waste of it can give you a moment’s pleasure. Oh, you don’t know, you don’t know how I love you!” He had been acting _Claude Melnotte_, and the intoxication of the sweet sentimental poetry was strong upon him; beyond which it is just possible that he may have taken a little more sparkling Moselle in the course of his dramatic exertions than can safely be taken by a young man of sanguine temperament. All prudence, all power of reticence, left him in that moment, and he dropped on his knees at Miss Hillary’s feet, like a lover in a stage-play. She was so beautiful--she seemed so far away from him even now, when her distress had brought her a little nearer than of old,--that this attitude of adoration seemed quite natural to him, almost the only attitude in which he dared address her. “Oh, if you knew how I love you,” he cried, passionately,--“if you could only believe or understand! But I am so ignorant--so unworthy--so far beneath you!” Miss Hillary drew herself away from him with a gesture of mingled surprise and disgust. “You dare to talk to me like this, and you are the affianced husband of my friend!” she cried. “O, Mr. Tredethlyn, you take a very mean advantage of my father’s difficulties and my distress.”