"Where must we go? We can't go back to that big place in Grosvenor Square. Who will manage for us? Who will see the doctor and the policemen?"
"I will do that."
"But there will be things that I cannot ask you to do. Why should I ask you to do anything?"
"Because we are friends."
"No," she said, "no. You cannot really regard me as a friend. I have been an impostor. I know that. I had no business to know a person like you at all. Oh, if the next six months could be over! Poor papa;—poor papa!" And then for the first time she burst into tears.
"I wish I knew what might comfort you," he said.
"How can there be any comfort? There never can be comfort again! As for comfort, when were we ever comfortable? It has been one trouble after another,—one fear after another! And now we are friendless and homeless. I suppose they will take everything that we have."
"Your papa had a lawyer, I suppose?"
"I think he had ever so many,—but I do not know who they were. His own clerk, who had lived with him for over twenty years, left him yesterday. I suppose they will know something in Abchurch Lane; but now that Herr Croll has gone I am not acquainted even with the name of one of them. Mr. Miles Grendall used to be with him."
"I do not think that he could be of much service."