"Perhaps not the exact sum, but the way in which the thing was to be done. In these days one doesn't know whom to trust. Men, and women too, have become so dishonest that nobody is safe anywhere. It has been awfully hard upon me,--awfully hard. I don't suppose that there was ever a moment in my life when the loss of £500 would have been so much to me as it is now. The question is, what will your father do for us?" Emily could not but remember her husband's intense desire to obtain money from her father not yet three months since, as though all the world depended on his getting it,--and his subsequent elation, as though all his sorrows were over for ever, because the money had been promised. And now,--almost immediately,--he was again in the same position. She endeavoured to judge him kindly, but a feeling of insecurity in reference to his affairs struck her at once and made her heart cold. Everything had been achieved, then, by a gift of £3000,--surely a small sum to effect such a result with a man living as her husband lived. And now the whole £3000 was gone;--surely a large sum to have vanished in so short a time! Something of the uncertainty of business she could understand, but a business must be perilously uncertain if subject to such vicissitudes as these! But as ideas of this nature crowded themselves into her mind she told herself again and again that she had taken him for better and for worse. If the worse were already coming she would still be true to her promise. "You had better tell papa everything," she said. "Had it not better come from you?" "No, Ferdinand. Of course I will do as you bid me. I will do anything that I can do. But you had better tell him. His nature is such that he will respect you more if it come from yourself. And then it is so necessary that he should know all;--all." She put whatever emphasis she knew how to use upon this word. "You could tell him--all, as well as I." "You would not bring yourself to tell it to me, nor could I understand it. He will understand everything, and if he thinks that you have told him everything, he will at any rate respect you." He sat silent for a while meditating, feeling always and most acutely that he had been ill-used,--never thinking for an instant that he had ill-used others. "£3000, you know, was no fortune for your father to give you!" She had no answer to make, but she groaned in spirit as she heard the accusation. "Don't you feel that yourself?" "I know nothing about money, Ferdinand. If you had told me to speak to him about it before we were married I would have done so."