weight with him, not even the tremulous question of Madeline, who made no attempt to hold him back, except by asking--“Do you think, perhaps, my father is right, and that they might think something has been held back?” “What is that to me?” he had replied; “I must do what is honest, whatever they think.” “Oh, _Honest_!” Mr Thursley cried, with a fierce little laugh of indignation and contempt. As a matter of fact, Gervase did produce an effect which was not good so far as public opinion was concerned. Mr Burton had been almost canonised for his honourable dealing, his openness and frankness, the “every assistance” which he had given to the liquidators, and that certainty, which everybody had, that nothing had been kept back. But it came to pass exactly as Mr Thursley had predicted, when the matter was re-opened. The creditors who had got three-fourths of their debts indeed got the whole, and were so much the better off, and had their mouths closed for evermore. But the world in which Mr Burton and his transactions were known, and which had given him so much credit for keeping nothing back, now discovered to its amazement that something had been kept back, and had all its usual suspicions awakened. And even the creditors scarcely thanked Gervase. He put them in the wrong, making them feel that they had been premature in their applauses. They looked back upon their accounts suspiciously, to see whether old Burton, after all, had not in some way got the better of them. As for Gervase himself, he was entirely absorbed by this business. He went, indeed, to Madeline for sympathy, and told her all that was happening, and how he was tormented and kept in pain by the innumerable delays and all the vexatious fuss and formality through which he was dragged before his business could be accomplished. The renunciation of all the money, which had indeed been gained by his own exertions, cost him nothing. He did not think of it; but the waiting, the confabulations, the meetings that had to be called, the papers that had to be signed, the special consent on all hands to make the transaction as odious and as tiresome as possible, did affect him, and that most painfully. He was harassed to death during those early summer days, in which London looks its best, and all the crowd of fashion pours in. Madeline, though her society was not that of fashion, yet had, as everybody has, a greater amount of engagements, a quickened current of life during the season, that high tide of English hurry. And though her heart was with the lover, who was no longer a lover, who seemed to have forgotten everything, both in the present and the future, except this one dogged resolve to get rid of his money, and silence at once and for ever all criticism or censure,--yet she was compelled to carry on the routine of her usual life, to go out, to lose herself more or less in the bustle and commotion of the period, and could not be entirely at his command, as he seemed to expect.