"Dick, I thought I told you never to mention that horrid man's name again." "You are quite sure he is a horrid man?" "Dick, don't be absurd." She flushed hotly. "What hurts me about our marriage is that you, the man, have no option in the matter. I am just a stepping-stone to wealth, so far as you are concerned, and I--I don't like it." "Why not, darling?" "Because it would have been so much nicer, if--if you had come to me with nothing, despised and friendless. Then, I could have shown my love by defying the whole world for your sake." "Thanks, darling, but I prefer the money, if you don't mind." "Ah! but you're a man." "I only want mother to come back to be perfectly happy," Dick said, gravely. "You don't know mother. She could stand anything but rebuke. That sermon of father's must have almost done for her. Nothing could be more terrible in her eyes than to be held up to contempt. You must make allowances for mother, Dora." "She must be wretchedly unhappy," Dora agreed. "Yet, she writes no letters that give any clue to her feelings." "No, the letters she sends are merely to let us know where she is--never a word about father." "Does she know how ill he has been?" "Well, you see, I can't write much, and I hesitated to say anything that would hurt her feelings. I said he'd been very ill, but was mending slowly, and we hoped to see him himself again in a week or two." "Does she know that he has given up St. Botolph's?" "Yes, I told her that." "She makes no mention of coming home?" "Not a word." "Dick, she must return, and at once," Dora declared, vehemently. "Not to this place, Dora. She would never do it. It wouldn't be fair to ask her." "But something must be done." "I feel pretty sick about it. It was partly through me and my wretched debts that father and mother got so short of money. Mother was always hard up. It runs in the blood. And, what with one thing and another, we were all of us in a pretty tight fix; and she tried to get us out of it." "I don't blame her for altering her father's checks. That's nothing," observed Dora, with typical feminine inconsequence, "but letting people think that--" "I know, I know! But it couldn't really have done me any harm when I was under the turf; and it meant ruin to father, if she had done nothing. Look here, Dora, mother must come back, or father must go to her. We've got to arrange it between us. If mother won't come home, she must be fetched." Dora sat for a few moments with her elbows resting on her knees and her chin on her hands, gazing thoughtfully out of the window, watching the sparrows on the path outside. "Can she ever forgive him?" she asked, after a pause. "Well, the sermon was certainly pretty rough, especially after things had been all smoothed out. But father is a demon for doing nasty things when he thinks they've got to be done. You don't suppose he's any less fond of mother than before, do you?"