“Papa,” she cried, “you don’t mean that Mr. Tredethlyn’s money is lost?” “Lost! No, child; but it may be a very long time before I shall be able to pay him. If you were not so foolish as to throw away one of the noblest hearts in Christendom--to say nothing of the fortune that goes along with it--there would be very little need for me to worry myself about this money.” “Oh, I understand, papa. If I were Mr. Tredethlyn’s wife, you would not be obliged to pay the twenty thousand pounds,” said Maude, very slowly. “I should not be tormented about it as I am now. Say no more, my dear; you don’t understand these things, and you drive me very nearly mad with your questions about my affairs.” “Forgive me, papa. No, I don’t understand--I can’t understand all at once; it seems so strange to me.” She bent her head and kissed her father on the forehead, and then went quietly out of the room; leaving him alone in the still summer twilight, with a belated wasp buzzing feebly amongst the fruit and flowers on the table. Maude went to her own room, and sitting there in the dusk, shed some of the bitterest tears that had ever fallen from her eyes. The discovery of her father’s views with regard to her had humiliated her to the very dust. The idea that Francis Tredethlyn’s loan would never be repaid was torture to her keen sense of honour; torture which was rendered still more poignant by the recollection of her own part in the transaction. Would he ever be paid? Would that money, for the loan of which--and never more than the loan--she had supplicated her friend’s betrothed husband, would that money ever be returned to the generous young man who had so freely lent it? Her father had said that it would in due course; but there was something in his manner that had neutralized the effect of his words. To Maude Hillary’s mind this debt was a very sacred one, a debt which _must_ be repaid, and for which she herself was responsible. Twenty thousand pounds;--all the faculties of her brain seemed to swim in a great sea of confusion as she thought of that terrible sum--twenty thousand pounds, which she was bound to see duly paid; and she was no longer an heiress, to whom money was dross. She was a penniless, helpless girl: worse off than other penniless girls by reason of her inexperience of poverty. She thought of Harcourt Lowther; and his image seemed to shine upon her across a wilderness of troubles; a bright and pleasant thing to look at, but with no promise of help, no inspiration of hope, no pledge of comfort in its brightness. “Perhaps papa is right, after all,” she thought, “and Harcourt would scarcely care to burden himself with a penniless wife.” She was ashamed of this brief treason against her lover, almost as soon as the thought had shaped itself; only in her despair it seemed to her as if there could be no security of any happiness upon this earth.