"'Think better of it, do, Harry,' I called after him, but he was already clanking over the lobby in his cyclopean shoes. Whether he heard me or not, he walked down the stairs, with his big brute at his heels, without once looking over his shoulder. "And now, dear Mabel, I have told you everything. You are, of course, to take for granted those Northumbrian words and idioms which drop from him, as I reminded you, as he grows warm in discussion. This is a 'report' rather than a letter, and I have sat up very late to finish it, and I send it to the post-office before I go to bed. Good night, and Heaven bless you, and I hope this gloomy letter may not vex you as much as its purport does me; disappoint you, judging from what you said to me when we talked the matter over, I scarcely think it can." There is a Latin proverb, almost the only four words of Latin I possess, which says, _Omne ignotum pro magnifico_, for which, and for its translation, I am obliged to Mr. Carmel: "The unknown is taken for the sublime." I did not at the time at all understand the nature of the danger that threatened, and its vagueness magnified it. Papa came in. He read the letter, and the deeper he got in it the paler his face grew, and the more it darkened. He drew a great breath as he laid it down. "Well, it's not worse than you expected?" said mamma at last. "I hope not. I've had so much to weary, and worry, and break me down; you have no idea what the journey to the Golden Friars was to me. I have not been at all myself. I've been trying to do too much. Ethel there will tell you all I said to my aunt; and really things go so wrong and so unluckily, no matter what one does, that I almost think I'll go to my bed and cry." "Yes, dear," said papa, thinking, a little bewildered. "It's--it's--it is--it's very perverse. The old scoundrel! I suppose this is something else." He took up a letter that had followed him by the same post, and nervously broke the seal. I was watching his face intently as he read. It brightened. "Here--here's a bit of good luck at last! Where's Mabel? Oh, yes! it's from Cloudesly. There are some leases just expired at Ellenston, and we shall get at least two thousand pounds, he thinks, for renewing. That makes it all right for the present. I wish it had been fifteen hundred more; but it's a great deal better than nothing. We'll tide it over, you'll find." And papa kissed her with effusion. "And you can give three hundred pounds to Le Panier and Tarlton; they have been sending so often lately," said mamma, recovering from her despondency. CHAPTER XXXV. LADY MARDYKES'S BALL.