"Alas, yes! How ardently do I wish that it had been in the control of another man, to whom you were indifferent, and who could have told you calmly what it shakes me to the soul to tell! I have also lost, but I can afford it; it is only a portion of my fortune that has gone down in wreck. I have still a competence left that makes me independent of the buffets of the world, that enables me to provide a home for those I love." "I fail to understand you, sir," she said, glancing from the window at her child, who was walking on the lawn with Charlotte, and who, seeing her mother looking at her, smiled and kissed her hand to her. "You have not yet informed me how I have lost my fortune." "You made investments----" "Acting upon your advice, sir." "True; I believed my advice to be good, and I invested part of my money also in the same stocks and shares. Unhappily the papers you have signed----" "Always by your directions, sir. You informed me that the investments were good, and that I need have no anxiety." "I cannot deny it; I was wrong, foolishly, madly wrong. I thought your fortune would be doubled, trebled. It has turned out disastrously, every shilling you possessed is lost. And, unhappily, as I was saying, the papers you have signed have involved you beyond the extent of your means. It racks me to think of what is before you, unless you accept the assistance which a friend is ready to tender you. A life of poverty, of privation for you and your dear child--it maddens me to think of it!" "For how long have you known this?" she asked faintly. It was the question he wished her to put to him. "I knew it," he said humbly, "when I made the proposal which you rejected. I knew then that you were ruined, and it was my desire to spare you. Had you answered as my heart led me to hope you would have done, I still should have kept the secret from your knowledge until the day that made you mine, to love, to shelter, to protect. It is the truth, dear Mrs. Grantham--it is the truth, on the word of an honorable gentleman." He put his hand to his heart, and sighed heavily. "I cannot but believe you," said Mrs. Grantham, pondering more upon his manner than the words he uttered; it seemed to her as if a light had suddenly descended upon her, through which she saw for the first time the true character of the man she had trusted. "I cannot but believe you when you tell me I am ruined, and that starvation lies before me and my child." "Alas!" he put in here. "Your child, your dear Clair!" "I had no understanding of business, and I relied implicitly upon you. I never questioned, never for a moment doubted." "Nor I," he murmured. "Am I not a sufferer, like yourself? Does that not prove how confident I was that I was acting for the best? Call me foolish, headstrong, if you will; inflict any penance you please upon me, and I am by your side to bear it."