"Well," exclaimed Barclay, taking a cash-box from a drawer and opening it with a good deal of noise, "if ever man was cursed with a tyrant for a wife--" "It isn't you. There!" cried Mrs Barclay, taking the bill which the visitor had duly signed, and placing it in a case along with some of its kin. "There you are, Denville," said Barclay, counting out the money in notes, "and if you go and tell people what a fool I am, I shall have to leave the town." "Not while I live, Mr Barclay," said the MC, taking the notes carefully, but with an air of indolent carelessness and grace, as if they were of no account to such a man as he. "Sir, I thank you from my very heart. You have done me a most kindly action. Mrs Barclay, I thank you. My daughter shall thank you for this. You'll pardon me. My visit is rather short. But business. Mr Barclay, good-day. I shall not forget this. Mrs Barclay, your humble servant." He took the hand she held out by the tips of the fingers, and bent over it to kiss them with the most delicate of touches; but somehow, just then there seemed to be a catch in his breath, and he pressed his lips firmly on the soft, fat hand. "God bless you!" he said huskily, and he turned and left the room. "Poor man!" said Mrs Barclay after a few moments' pause, as she and her lord listened to the descending steps, and heard the front door close. "Why, look here, Josiah, at my hand, if it ain't a tear." "Tchah! an old impostor and sham. Wipe it off, woman, wipe it off. Kissing your hand, too, like that, before my very face." "No, Jo-si-ah, I don't believe he's a bad one under all his sham and fuss. Folks don't know folkses' insides. They say you are about the hard-heartedest old money-lender that ever breathed, but they don't know you as I do. There, it was very good of you to let him have it, poor old man. I knew you would." "I've thrown fifty pounds slap into the gutter." "No, you haven't, dear; you've lent it to that poor old fellow, and you've just pleased me a deal better than if you'd given me a diamond ring, and that's for it, and more to come." As she spoke she threw one plump arm round the money-lender's neck, and there was a sound in the room as of a smack. Volume One, Chapter XXV. A REVELATION. "Oh, May, May! As if I had not care and pain enough without this. Surely it cannot be true." "Hush! don't make a fuss like that, you silly thing. You'll have the people hearing you down in the street. How could I help it?" "Help it? May, you must have been mad." "Oh! no, I wasn't," said Mrs Burnett, nestling into a corner of the couch in her father's drawing-room. "I believe he was, though, poor fellow." She gazed up at her portrait with her pretty girlish face wrinkling up, and these wrinkles seeming to have had work to get the better of the dimples in her baby cheeks and chin. "He was dreadfully fond of me, Claire," she continued, "and I was very fond of him. And then, you see, we were both so young."