He waved his hands towards his horses just disappearing from sight and then went back to bed, where he lay for a while very quiet. Then he roused up and said: “I don’t know anything about the business. Everything is misty and unreal, except that terrible day when the mob came, and I wanted to kill myself. That, with what led to it, is always before me. Just now my brain is clearer and I want to know what has been done.” Very briefly Louie told him what had been sold and what debts were paid. “And the house?” he asked. “Is that sold?” “No,” Louie said. “It is in the market but no one has bought it. The price is so high, but Mr. Blake advises us not to sell for less. He has a purchaser in mind.” “Yes,” Mr. Grey replied. “The price may seem high, but I have spent more than that upon it and I’d like to stay here as long as I live. It is a beautiful place, but if a purchaser is found, don’t hesitate on my account. We can find some cheap place. May be we can move into the little house in which we once lived in White’s Row. Nancy told me it was vacant. That would be a joke and a kind of retributive justice, too. I guess the judge would be glad to rent it to us again. He’d say the end of our see-saw was down pretty low.” He laughed aloud and then relapsed into silence, with his eyes closed and his whole body as motionless as if he were dead. Mrs. Grey had been persuaded to take another room, and was nearly as helpless as her husband with nervous prostration, from which she did not rally, and thus every care was left to Louie, whose burden grew heavier as the summer waned and the autumn came on. On the day after her interview with Herbert she had answered Miss Percy’s letter, telling her of the trouble which had come upon them and of her resolve to pay the debts, if possible, and adding that when her father and mother were able to be left she should come to Paris if they could afford the expense of the journey. “Whatever you expend for me I shall pay again, for something tells me I shall succeed,” she wrote, taking upon herself another debt in addition to the one already assumed. But she felt brave and hopeful, knowing nothing of the difficulties which attend the career she had marked out for herself. Miss Percy seemed to her a tower of strength, and she waited anxiously for a reply to her letter. It came at last, full of sympathy and hope and promises to do whatever could be done should the chance come to do it. Evidently Miss Percy had heard more of the failure than Louie had told her, and her great, kind heart went out warmly towards the young girl buffeting the tide of misfortune alone.