“And my father was honoured and praised for keeping back nothing. They gave him his house--the house my only property--to show their sense of the fact that he had kept back nothing. Don’t you see the irony of it? He must have kept back--who can tell what?--when he has enough to send me this. Oh, Madeline, it makes my heart sick!” Madeline’s countenance was a wonderful sight, had he had eyes to see it. She grew very red, her eyes filled: an air of impatient vexation, almost beyond her control, came into her face. But Gervase noted nothing, being fully occupied with his own thoughts. “I ask myself, can I use this money which has been subtracted from cooked accounts--which has been withdrawn from its first honest purpose of paying his creditors--which is false money, dishonest money? Good heavens! Madeline, my darling, have pity on me--don’t think me a fool. My father, whom I always trusted--whom I thought an honourable man----” “You have no right,” said Madeline, in a voice which was low and trembling, “to say that he is not an honourable man.” “If he has sent me this--and who else could have sent it?--how can I ever believe in him more? He paid his creditors only 15s. in the pound, and got credit for having kept back nothing--while all the while---- How,” cried Gervase, walking about the room with hasty steps, “how can I use money--that has been so procured?” Two hasty tears fell from Madeline’s eyes. “Oh, this is too much,” she said to herself quickly--but Gervase was too much taken up with his own emotions to observe hers, and she dried the tears with a hurried hand. “Gervase,” she said, in a tone which was not without slight traces of exasperation, “you have at least paid all your father’s debts--in full.” “Thank heaven!” he said. “Well, how do you know he has not heard of that, and--and pays you back like this? Much more likely than that he knew you had special occasion for the money. How should he know? But he would hear you had paid his debts, and he gives it you back.” Gervase shook his head. “I would give it all,” he cried, “ten times told, to make sure that he did not wilfully, consciously, to the detriment of his creditors, keep this back.” “At the worst,” she said, evidently compelling herself to patience, “they are all paid; there is nobody to whom it is due.” “No one that I know of; but, Madeline----” “Oh,” she cried, almost wildly, “don’t bring up any more objections, Gervase! If it is your father’s, it is only right that he should provide for you. You have paid everything for him. You have no right to refuse him, or to make a fuss about the money. Don’t say any more! or it is I who will go out of my senses,” she cried, suddenly bursting into an almost hysterical flood of tears, which she had no power to restrain.