Frances Kane's Fortune. Meade L. T.

trailed after her. She had put a bunch of Scotch roses into her belt. Her step grew slower and heavier as she walked across the smoothly kept lawn, but her voice was just as calm and clear as usual as she said gently:

      "Supper is quite ready. You must be so tired and hungry, Philip."

      "Not at all," he said, leaving Fluff and coming up to her side. "This garden rests me. To be back here again is perfectly delightful. To appreciate an English garden and English life, and – and English ladies – here his eyes fell for a brief moment on Fluff – one most have lived for ten years in the backwoods of Australia. How is your father, Frances? I trust Miss Danvers had no real cause for alarm?"

      "Oh, no; Ellen is a fanciful little creature. He did sleep rather heavily. I think it was the heat; but he is all right now, and waiting to welcome you in the supper-room. Won't you let me show you the way to your room? You would like to wash your hands before eating."

      Frances and Arnold walked slowly in the direction of the house. Fluff had left them; she was engaged in an eager game of play with an overgrown and unwieldly pup and a Persian kitten. Arnold had observed with some surprise that she had forgotten even to inquire for Mr. Kane.

      CHAPTER VI.

      "I WILL NOT SELL THE FIRS."

      On the morning after Arnold's arrival the squire called his daughter into the south parlor.

      "My love," he said, "I want a word with you."

      As a rule Frances was very willing to have words with her father. She was always patient and gentle and sweet with him; but she would have been more than human if she had not cast some wistful glances into the garden, where Philip was waiting for her. He and she also had something to talk about that morning, and why did Fluff go out, and play those bewitching airs softly to herself on the guitar? And why did she sing in that wild-bird voice of hers? and why did Philip pause now and then in his walk, as though he was listening – which indeed he was, for it would be difficult for any one to shut their ears to such light and harmonious sounds. Frances hated herself for feeling jealous. No – of course she was not jealous; she could not stoop to anything so mean. Poor darling little Fluff! and Philip, her true lover, who had remained constant to her for ten long years.

      With a smile on her lips, and the old look of patience in her steady eyes, she turned her back to the window and prepared to listen to what the squire had to say.

      "The fact is, Frances – " he began. "Sit down, my dear, sit down; I hate to have people standing, it fidgets me so. Oh! you want to be out with that young man; well, Fluff will amuse him – dear little thing, Fluff – most entertaining. Has a way of soothing a man's nerves, which few women possess. You, my dear, have often a most irritating way with you; not that I complain – we all have our faults. You inherit this intense overwrought sort of manner from your mother, Frances."

      Frances, who was standing absolutely quiet and still again, smiled slightly.

      "You had something to talk to me about," she said, in her gentlest of voice.

      "To be sure I had. I can tell you I have my worries – wonder I'm alive – and since your mother died never a bit of sympathy do I get from mortal. There, read that letter from Spens, and see what you make of it. Impudent? uncalled for? I should think so; but I really do wonder what these lawyers are coming to. Soon there'll be no distinctions between man and man anywhere, when a beggarly country lawyer dares to write to a gentleman like myself in that strain. But read the letter, Frances; you'll have to see Spens this afternoon. I'm not equal to it."

      "Let me see what Mr. Spens says," answered Frances.

      She took the lawyer's letter from the squire's shaking old fingers, and opened it. Then her face became very pale, and as her eyes glanced rapidly over the contents, she could not help uttering a stifled exclamation.

      "Yes, no wonder you're in a rage," said the squire. "The impudence of that letter beats everything."

      "But what does Mr. Spens mean?" said Frances. "He says here – unless you can pay the six thousand pounds owing within three months, his client has given him instructions to sell the Firs. What does he mean, father? I never knew that we owed a penny. Oh, this is awful!"

      "And how do you suppose we have lived?" said the squire, who was feeling all that undue sense of irritation which guilty people know so well. "How have we had our bread and butter? How has the house been kept up? How have the wages been met? I suppose you thought that that garden of yours – those vegetables and fruit – have kept everything going? That's all a woman knows. Besides, I've been unlucky – two speculations have failed – every penny I put in lost in them. Now, what's the matter, Frances? You have a very unpleasant manner of staring."

      "There was my mother's money," said Frances, who was struggling hard to keep herself calm. "That was always supposed to bring in something over two hundred pounds a year. I thought – I imagined – that with the help I was able to give from the garden and the poultry yard that we – we lived within our means."

      Her lips trembled slightly as she spoke. Fluff was playing "Sweethearts" on her guitar, and Arnold was leaning with his arms folded against the trunk of a wide-spreading oak-tree. Was he listening to Fluff, or waiting for Frances? She felt like a person struggling through a horrible nightmare.

      "I thought we lived within our means," she said, faintly.

      "Just like you – women are always imagining things. We have no means to live on; your mother's money has long vanished – it was lost in that silver mine in Peru. And the greater part of the six thousand pounds lent by Spens has one way or another pretty nearly shared the same fate. I've been a very unlucky man, Frances, and if your mother were here, she'd pity me. I've had no one to sympathize with me since her death."

      "I do, father," said his daughter. She went up and put her arms round his old neck. "It was a shock, and I felt half stunned. But I fully sympathize."

      "Not that I am going to sell the Firs," said the squire, not returning Frances's embrace, but allowing her to take his limp hand within her own. "No, no; I've no idea of that. Spens and his client, whoever he is, must wait for their money, and that's what you have got to see him about, Frances. Come, now, you must make the best terms you can with Spens – a woman can do what she likes with a man when she knows how to manage."

      "But what am I to say, father?"

      "Say? Why, that's your lookout. Never heard of a woman yet who couldn't find words. Say? Anything in the world you please, provided you give him to clearly to understand that come what may I will not sell the Firs."

      Frances stood still for two whole minutes. During this time she was thinking deeply – so deeply that she forgot the man who was waiting outside – she forgot everything but the great and terrible fact that, notwithstanding all her care and all her toil, beggary was staring them in the face.

      "I will see Mr. Spens," she said at last, slowly: "it is not likely that I shall be able to do much. If you have mortgaged the Firs to this client of Mr. Spens, he will most probably require you to sell, in order to realize his money; but I will see him, and let you know the result."

      "You had better order the gig, then, and go now; he is sure to be in at this hour. Oh, you want to talk to the man that you fancy is in love with you; but lovers can wait, and business can't. Understand clearly, once for all, Frances, that if the Firs is sold, I die."

      "Dear father," said Frances – again she took his unwilling hand in hers – "do you suppose I want the Firs to be sold? Don't I love every stone of the old place, and every flower that grows here? If words can save it, they won't be wanting on my part. But you know better than I do that I am absolutely powerless in the matter."

      She went out of the room, and the squire sat with the sun shining full on him, and grumbled. What was a blow to Frances, a blow which half stunned her in its suddenness and unexpectedness, had come gradually to the squire. For years past he knew that while his daughter was doing her utmost to make two ends meet – was toiling early and late to bring in a little money to help the slender household purse – she was only postponing an evil day which could never be averted. From the first, Squire Kane in his own small way had been a speculator – never at