Austin blushed. 'No,' he said; 'I am not. I am a managing clerk at your old office. I get two hundred a year, and we are going to marry on that.' Athelstan nodded. 'A bold thing to do. However----Twenty-one to-morrow--we shall see.' 'And I am sorry to say there is the greatest opposition--on the part of your mother and your other sister. I am not allowed in the house, and Elsie is treated as a rebel.' 'Oh! well. If you see your way, my boy, get married, and have a happy life, and leave them to come round at their leisure. Elsie has a heart of gold. She can believe in a man. She is the only one of my people who stood up for me when they accused me without a shadow of proof of---- The only one--the only one. It is impossible for me to forget that--and difficult,' he added, 'to forgive the other thing.--Is my sister Hilda still at home?' 'No. She is married to Sir Samuel, brother of your Mr. Dering. He is a great deal older than his wife; but he is very rich.' 'Oh!--and my mother?' 'I believe she continues in good health. I am not allowed the privilege of calling upon her.' 'And my old chief?' 'He also continues well.' 'And now, since we have cleared the ground so far, let us come to business. How about that robbery?' 'What robbery?' The old business had taken place when George was a lad just entering upon his articles. He had ceased to think of it. 'What robbery? Man alive!'--Athelstan sprang to his feet--'there is only one robbery to me in the whole history of the world since men and robberies began. What robbery? Look here, Master George Austin, when a man is murdered, there is for that man only one murder in the whole history of the world. All the other murders, even that of Abel himself, are of no concern at all--not one bit. He isn't interested in them. They don't matter to him a red cent. That's my case. The robbery of eight years ago, which took a few hundred pounds from a rich man, changed my whole life; it drove me out into the world; it forced me for a time to live among the prodigals and the swine and the husks. It handed me over to a thousand devils; and you ask me what robbery?' 'I am very sorry. It is now a forgotten thing. Nobody remembers it any more. I doubt whether Mr. Dering himself ever thinks of it.' 'Well, what was discovered after all? Who did it?' 'Nothing at all has been discovered. No one knows to this day who did it.' 'Nothing at all?--I am disappointed. Hasn't old Checkley done time for it? Nothing found out?' 'Nothing. The notes were stopped in time, and were never presented. After five or six years the Bank of England gave Mr. Dering notes in the place of those stolen. And that is all there is to tell.' 'Nothing discovered! And the notes never presented? What good did the fellow get by it, then?' 'I don't know. But nothing was discovered.'