The question which disturbed Frances, which nobody knew or cared for, was just as little likely to gain attention next day as it had been on the evening of Mr Winterbourn’s death. Lady Markham returned to Nelly before breakfast; she was with her most of the day; and Markham, though he lent an apparent attention to what Frances said to him, was still far too much absorbed in his own subject to be easily moved by hers. “Gaunt? Oh, he is all right,” he said.

“Will you speak to him, Markham? Will you warn him? Mr Ramsay says he is losing all his money; and I know, oh Markham, I know that he has not much to lose.”

“Claude is a little meddler. I assure you, Fan, Gaunt knows his own affairs best.{v3-168}”

“No,” cried Frances: “when I tell you, Markham, when I tell you! that they are quite poor, really poor—not like you.”

“I have told you, my little dear, that I am the poorest beggar in London.”

“Oh Markham! and you drive about in hansoms, and smoke cigars, all day.”

“Well, my dear, what would you have me do? Keep on trudging through the mud, which would waste all my time; or get on the knife-board of an omnibus? Well, these are the only alternatives. The omnibuses have their recommendation—they are fun; but after a while, society in that development palls upon the intelligent observer. What do you want me to do, Fan? Come, I have a deal on my mind; but to please you, and to make you hold your tongue, if there is anything I can do, I will try.”

“You can do everything, Markham. Warn him that he is wasting his money—that he is spending what belongs to the old people—that he is making himself wretched. Oh, don’t laugh, Markham! Oh, if I were in your place! I know what I should do—I would{v3-169} get him to go home, instead of going to—those places.”

“Which places, Fan?”

“Oh,” cried the girl, exasperated to tears, “how can I tell?—the places you know—the places you have taken him to, Markham—places where, if the poor General knew it, or Mrs Gaunt——”

“There you are making a mistake, little Fan. The good people would think their son was in very fine company. If he tells them the names of the persons he meets, they will think——”

“Then you know they will think wrong, Markham!” she cried, almost with violence, keeping herself with a most strenuous effort from an outburst of indignant weeping. He did not reply at once; and she thought he was about to consider the question on its merits, and endeavour to find out what he could do. But she was undeceived when he spoke.

“What day did you say, Fan, the funeral was to be?” he asked, with the air of a man who has escaped from an unwelcome intrusion to the real subject of his thoughts.

Sir Thomas found her alone, flushed and{v3-170} miserable, drying her tears with a feverish little angry hand. She was very much alone during these days, when Lady Markham was so often with Nelly Winterbourn. Sir Thomas was pleased to find her, having also an object of his own. He soothed her, when he saw that she had been crying. “Never mind me,” he said; “but you must not let other people see that you are feeling it so much: for you cannot be supposed to take any particular interest in Winterbourn: and people will immediately suppose that you and your mother are troubled about the changes that must take place in the house.”

“I was not thinking at all of Mrs Winterbourn,” cried Frances, with indignation.

“No, my dear; I knew you could not be. Don’t let any one but me see you crying. Lady Markham will feel the marriage dreadfully, I know. But now is our time for our grand coup.”

“What grand coup?” the girl said, with an astonished look.

“Have you forgotten what I said to you at the Priory? One of the chief objects of my{v3-171} life is to bring Waring back. It is intolerable to think that a man of his abilities should be banished for ever, and lost not only to his country but his kind. Even if he were working for the good of the race out there—— But he is doing nothing but antiquities, so far as I can hear, and there are plenty of antiquarians good for nothing else. Frances, we must have him home.”

“Home!” she said. Her heart went back with a bound to the rooms in the Palazzo with all the green persiani shut, and everything dark and cool: it was getting warm in London, but there were no such precautions taken. And the loggia at night, with the palm-trees waving majestically their long drooping fans, and the soft sound of the sea coming over the houses of the Marina—ah, and the happy want of thought, the pleasant vacancy, in which nothing ever happened! She drew a long breath. “I ought not to say so, perhaps; but when you say home——”

“You think of the place where you were brought up? That is quite natural. But it would not be the same to him. He was not{v3-172} brought up there; he can have nothing to interest him there. Depend upon it, he must very often wish that he could pocket his pride and come back. We must try to get him back, Frances. Don’t you think, my dear, that we could manage it, you and I?”

Frances shook her head, and said she did not know. “But I should be very glad—oh, very glad: if I am to stay here,” she said.

“Of course you would be glad; and of course you are to stay here. You could not leave your poor mother by herself. And now that Markham—now that probably everything will be changed for Markham—— If Markham were out of the way, it would be so much easier; for, you know, he always was the stumbling-block. She would not let Waring manage him, and she could not manage him herself.”

Frances was so far instructed in what was going on around her, that she knew how important in Markham’s history the death of Mr Winterbourn had been; but it was not a subject on which she could speak. She said: “I am very sorry papa did not like Markham. It{v3-173} does not seem possible not to like Markham. But I suppose gentlemen—— Oh, Sir Thomas, if he were here, I would ask papa to do something for me; but now I don’t know who to ask to help me—if anything can be done.”

“Is it something I can do?”

“I think,” she said, “any one that was kind could do it; but only not a girl. Girls are good for so little. Do you remember Captain Gaunt, who came to town a few weeks ago? Sir Thomas, I have heard that something has happened to Captain Gaunt. I don’t know how to tell you. Perhaps you will think that it is not my business; but don’t you think it is your friend’s business, when you get into trouble? Don’t you think that—that people who know you—who care a little for you—should always be ready to help?”

“That is a hard question to put to me. In the abstract, yes; but in particular cases—— Is it Captain Gaunt for whom you care a little?”

Frances hesitated a moment, and then she answered boldly: “Yes—at least I care for his people a great deal. And he has come home{v3-174} from India, not very strong; and he knew nothing about—about what you call Society; no more than I did. And now I hear that he is—I don’t know how to tell you, Sir Thomas—losing all his money (and he has not any money) in the places where Markham goes—in the places that Markham took him to. Oh, wait till I have told you everything, Sir Thomas! they are not rich people,—not like any of you here. Markham says he is poor——”

“So he is, Frances.”

“Ah,” she cried, with hasty contempt, “but you don’t understand! He may not have much money; but they—they live in a little house with two maids and Toni. They have no luxuries or grandeur. When they take a drive in old Luca’s carriage, it is something to think about. All that is quite, quite different from you people here. Don’t you see, Sir Thomas, don’t you see? And Captain Gaunt has been—oh, I don’t know how it is—losing his money; and he has not got any—and he is miserable—and I cannot get any one to take an interest, to tell him—to warn him, to get him to give up{v3-175}——”

“Did he tell you all this himself?” said Sir Thomas, gravely.

“Oh no, not a word. It was Mr Ramsay who told me; and when I begged him to say something, to warn him——”

“He could not do that. There he was quite right; and you were quite wrong, if you will let me say so. It is too common a case, alas! I don’t know what any one can do.”

“Oh, Sir Thomas! if you will think of the old General and his mother, who love him more than all the rest—for he is the youngest. Oh, won’t you do something, try something, to save him?” Frances clasped her hands, as if in prayer. She raised her eyes to his face with such an eloquence of entreaty, that his heart was touched. Not only was her whole soul in the petition for the sake of him who was in peril, but it was full of boundless confidence and trust in the man to whom she appealed. The other plea might have failed; but this last can scarcely fail to affect the mind of any individual to whom it is addressed.

Sir Thomas put his hand on her shoulder with fatherly tenderness. “My dear little girl,{v3-176}” he said, “what do you think I can do? I don’t know what I can do. I am afraid I should only make things worse, were I to interfere.”

“No, no. He is not like that. He would know you were a friend. He would be thankful. And oh, how thankful, how thankful I should be!”

“Frances, do you take, then, so great an int............