“Is engaged to Herbert!” she exclaimed, and the judge replied, “Was engaged, but isn’t now. She has thrown him over! Think of it! Refused Herbert! My son! And is going to sing on the stage to pay her father’s debts. There’s grit for you! And the boy is all broke up, and says he aches all over.” “What do you mean?” Mrs. White asked, resuming her crimping, while her husband repeated in substance what Herbert had told him of his engagement and of Louie’s visit to the Session and its result. “I could have stopped it, of course, but I didn’t,” he said, “but I must say the girl is plucky, and she did do me a good turn and no mistake, and, Susan, I don’t b’lieve you ever wrote that note.” “What note?” his wife asked, and the judge replied, “Lord Harry, is your memory so short? You was going to send her a nicely worded note of thanks, and I was to give her a present at Christmas, and we didn’t do neither, but ’tain’t too late. Their house is to be sold, they must live somewhere, and I b’lieve I’ll let ’em have that house in White’s Row, where they used to live, free, if they want it. Yes, sir, that’ll be better than the bellus thing, and will be heaping coals. Yes, sir!” Just why he was to heap coals, unless it were that Louie had refused his son, was not clear to him; but having decided on the house in White’s Row, he went to bed in a much calmer frame of mind than Herbert, who sat through nearly the entire night, reviewing the past as connected with Louie, and feeling that life could never be again to him just what it had been when she was his guiding star. There was much for which he blamed himself—much for which he was sorry, and yet—he could not help the little word yet, which came stealing into his mind with a suggestion that the present condition of things was better than the old. His father knew all, and had not annihilated him. Then, Mr. Grey might die. He did not quite believe he hoped he would; but, if he should, and the disgrace be forgotten, and Louie get over the Quixotic idea of the stage, and paying the debts, which would take so many years, she might come back to him, and he be able to take her, without fear of his father or the world. There was comfort in this, and his heart was not quite as sore, or the world as dark, when, just as it was growing light, he fell into a troubled sleep. CHAPTER XVII THE SHADOW OF DEATH Mr. Grey had been so impressed with a conviction that his creditors would proceed against him and was so nervous on the subject that Louie decided to tell him that nothing was to be done. This was the morning after the meeting, when his mind seemed clearer and he said to her, “What are they doing about _me_? I mean, will they proceed against me? They can, you know.” “No,” Louie replied. “Some of them are a good deal excited, of course; but they will do nothing. I have that from the best authority, so, don’t worry any more.”