“Read this letter, and tell me if you think it is true.”
It was addressed to Sir William Treherne; the last humble appeal of a broken-down man; the signature “Francis Charteris.”
I tried my best to disguise the emotion which Miss Johnston herself did not show, and returned the letter, merely inquiring if Sir William had answered it?
“No. He will not. He disbelieves the facts.”
“Do you, also?”
“I cannot say. The—the writer was not always accurate in his statements.”
Women are, in some things, stronger and harder than men. I doubt if any man could have spoken as steadily as your sister did at this minute. While I explained to her, as I thought it right to do, though with the manner of one talking of a stranger to a stranger—the present position of Mr. Charteris, she replied not a syllable. Only passing a felled tree—she suddenly sank down upon it, and sat motionless.
“What is he to do?” she said, at last.
I replied that the Insolvent Court could free him from his debts, and grant him protection from further imprisonment; that though thus sunk in circumstances, a Government situation was hardly to be hoped for, still there were in Liverpool, clerkships and mercantile opportunities, in which any person so well educated as he, might begin the world again—health permitting.
“His health was never good—has it failed him?”