The poor man changed from red to white. His cheeks became flabby. His arms, which had been folded, dropped. He suddenly grew limp. It is rather terrible to see a confident, aggressive man become suddenly limp. Perhaps he had built confidently on this advance; perhaps he was not quite so substantial as he boasted and as he seemed; perhaps that great shop, with four and twenty girls in black with white cuffs, all in a row, was haunted by the spectre of which nobody talks, though it is seen daily by so many--the grisly, threatening, lean, gaunt, fierce-eyed ghost called Bankruptcy. He clapped his hat on his head. He recovered a little. He tried to smile. He assumed some show of dignity. He even laughed. Then he replied, with genuine heartfelt emotion, "The Lord forgive you!" and walked out of the room. John Haveril turned to the pew-opener. "Here is your letter," he said; "I return it to you. Why should I give you anything? You are fifty years of age, you say. You have a son in good employ. You have a daughter--this girl, I suppose--in the School Board service. You have a reasonably good situation." The lady's face dropped and lengthened. "Oh!" she cried; "don't refuse! don't refuse! It's such a trifle to you; you would never miss it, and never feel it. And it would be the making of me--it would indeed." John Haveril shook his head with the deliberation and the expression of a bear. His mind was made up. The woman went on, but feebly-- "You can't like to own--you so rich, and all--that you've got a cousin in such a humble place as mine." "You might help her to be respectable," her daughter put in. "You can be respectable in any situation. I am quite as proud of you in your present situation as if you were what you want to be--a lodging-house keeper at Margate." He turned to her daughter. "My dear," he said kindly, "you are a little fool." "Why? Oh, why?"--and her heart sank. "Because you want to give up the best work that a woman can do, where there's pay enough, and holidays, and respect----" The girl shook her head. "You don't know," she moaned, "the work and the drudgery." "And to change it for the worst work in the world. My dear, you should be proud of being what you are. If you were in the States, you would feel proud of your work. What? Give up that work for a miserable little shop, where you must cheat to make both ends meet? Don't be silly. Go back and thank God, my dear, that He has put you where you can do some good." She sat down and pulled out her pocket-handkerchief. Her mother stood beside her, her lips moving, her cheek flaming. "Shall I give you back your letter?" John Haveril asked. She took it, tore it up, threw the fragments on the floor, seized her mother by the arm, and dragged her out; whether in repentance or in anger the bystanders could not know. * * * * * They were all gone now, except the bankrupt. "You've got my letter, too," he said. "What are you going to do for me?"