At length I saw a cab, like a waving mass of black mist, halt at the door, and a double knock followed. My breath almost left me. In a minute or two the servant, opening the door, said, "Mr. Forrester," and that gentleman stepped into the gloomy room, with a despatch-box in his hand, looking ominously grave and pale. He took mamma's hand, and looked, I thought, with a kind of doubtful inquiry in her face, as if measuring her strength to bear some unpleasant news. I almost forgot to shake hands with him, I was so horribly eager to hear him speak. Mamma was much more confident than I, and said, as soon as he had placed his box beside him, and sat down: "I'm so obliged to you, Mr. Forrester; you have been so extremely kind to us. My daughter told me that you intended making inquiries, and letting us know all you heard; I hope you think it satisfactory?" He looked down, and shook his head in silence. Mamma flushed very much, and stood up, staring at him, and grew deadly pale. "It is not--it can't be less--I hope it's not--than nine hundred a year. If it is not that, what is to become of us?" Mamma's voice sounded hard and stern, though she spoke very low. I, too, was staring at the messenger of fate with all my eyes, and my heart was thumping hard. "Very far from satisfactory. I wish it were anything at all like the sum you have named," said Mr. Forrester, very dejectedly, but gathering courage for his statement as he proceeded. "I'll tell you, Mrs. Ware, the result of my correspondence, and I am really pained and grieved that I should have such a statement to make. I find that you opened your marriage settlement, except the provision for your daughter, which, I regret to say, is little more than a thousand pounds, and she takes nothing during your life, and then we can't put it down at more than forty pounds a year." "But--but I want to know," broke in poor mamma, with eyes that glared, and her very lips white, "what there is--how much we have got to live on?" "I hope from my heart there may be something, Mrs. Ware, but I should not be treating you fairly if I did not tell you frankly that it seems to me a case in which relations ought to come forward." I felt so stunned that I could not speak. "You mean, ask their assistance?" said mamma. "My good God! I can't--we can't--I could not do that!" "Mamma," said I, with white lips, "had not we better hear all that Mr. Forrester has to tell us?" "Allow me," continued mamma, excitedly; "there must be something, Ethel--don't talk folly. We can live at Malory, and, however small our pittance, we must make it do. But I won't consent to beg." Mamma's colour came again as she said this, with a look of haughty resentment at Mr. Forrester. That poor gentleman seemed distressed, and shifted his position a little uneasily.