"And you want to know if there is any likelihood of my following their example?" he said. "Have you also heard of men who have made that second effort--who have failed again--and who have doubled the debts they owed to their brethren in business who trusted them? I knew one of those men myself. He committed suicide." She laid her hand for a moment on his. "I understand you," she said. "If ruin comes--" "If ruin comes," he interposed, "a man without money and without credit can make but one last atonement. Don't speak of it now." She looked at him with horror. "I didn't mean that!" she said. "Shall we go back to what you read in the will?" he suggested. "Yes--if you will give me a minute to compose myself." In less than the minute she had asked for, Mrs. Callender was calm enough to go on. "I now possess what is called a life-interest in my husband's fortune," she said. "The money is to be divided, at my death, among charitable institutions; excepting a certain event--" "Which is provided for in the will?" Ernest added, helping her to go on. "Yes. I am to be absolute mistress of the whole of the four hundred thousand pounds--" her voice dropped, and her eyes looked away from him as she spoke the next words--"on this one condition, that I marry again." He looked at her in amazement. "Surely I have mistaken you," he said. "You mean on this one condition, that you do not marry again?" "No, Mr. Lismore; I mean exactly what I have said. You now know that the recovery of your credit and your peace of mind rests entirely with yourself." After a moment of reflection he took her hand and raised it respectfully to his lips. "You are a noble woman!" he said. She made no reply. With drooping head and downcast eyes she waited for his decision. He accepted his responsibility. "I must not, and dare not, think of the hardship of my own position," he said; "I owe it to you to speak without reference to the future that may be in store for me. No man can be worthy of the sacrifice which your generous forgetfulness of yourself is willing to make. I respect you; I admire you; I thank you with my whole heart. Leave me to my fate, Mrs. Callender--and let me go." He rose. She stopped him by a gesture. "A young woman," she answered, "would shrink from saying--what I, as an old woman, mean to say now. I refuse to leave you to your fate. I ask you to prove that you respect me, admire me, and thank me with your whole heart. Take one day to think--and let me hear the result. You promise me this?" He promised. "Now go," she said. Next morning Ernest received a letter from Mrs. Callender. She wrote to him as follows: "There are some considerations which I ought to have mentioned yesterday evening, before you left my house. "I ought to have reminded you--if you consent to reconsider your decision--that the circumstances do not require you to pledge yourself to me absolutely.