There was nothing in her voice or mien to lend colour to this statement, but none of her dear ones ventured to cavil at it. Having completed the discomfiture of the guilty parties by heaving a mournful sigh she allowed Charlotte to support her to a sofa, and sank down upon it Charlotte arranged a cushion behind her head, placed a stool under her feet, and retired to a chair on the other side of the wide hearth, directing a look of anxious enquiry at her brother as she sat down. There was a strong resemblance between them. Both favoured their mama, unlike the larger and darker Lydia, who took after her father. Lady Lynton’s oft-repeated assertion that Charlotte was the image of what she herself had been strained no one’s credulity, for although time had faded the widow’s fair beauty, and domestic trials had implanted a peevish expression on her classic countenance, she was still a remarkably handsome woman.

“I collect,” she said, “that That Man has departed. I might have expected, perhaps, that he would have thought it proper to have taken leave of me. No doubt I must accustom myself to being treated as a person of no account.”

“I’m afraid I must take the blame of that omission on myself, Mama,” said Adam. “Wimmering was anxious to pay his parting respects to you, but I wouldn’t permit it, knowing you to be laid down upon your bed. He charged me with the task of making his apologies.”

“I am only too thankful to have been spared the necessity of seeing him again,” stated her ladyship, somewhat irrationally. “I never liked him, never! And nothing will convince me that our misfortunes are not due to his management of your poor father’s affairs!”

Once again Charlotte intervened. “May we know how matters stand, Adam? We feel they can’t be worse than our conjectures, don’t we, Mama? It can scarcely come as a shock to us, even if we are quite ruined.”

“Nothing could be a shock to me,” said her parent. “After all, I have undergone I have become inured to disaster. I only wish to know when I must expect to find the roof sold over my head.”