Walking like an automaton, though very pale, and tremulous in heart and limb, Alison entered the dining-room, where she found her father walking up and down its entire length, with a letter crushed and crumpled in his thin white hand, which was nervously clenched upon it. His face was very pale; his lips were twitching, and drops of perspiration stood upon his brow.
'Papa!' exclaimed Alison, winding her soft arms round him; 'what is the matter with you?'
'It has come at last, child.'
'What has come?'
'The long-impending and utter ruin, unless—unless——'
'What?'
'You will save me; end my sorrows, and your own, by accepting Cadbury. You can lift from my heart and our family the shadow that has darkened them so long—the cold shadow of grinding poverty.'
Her lips became white and parched—so parched that she had to moisten them with her tongue, and even then she could not speak for a time. Bevil Goring's kisses were fresh upon them, and now she had to listen to a death sentence like this!
Her first dread had been a reference to her absence at such a time, but, by the business in question, it was evident her ramble in the dusk was forgotten, or a very subordinate matter indeed.
'A man named Slagg has written me,' said Sir Ranald, in a low and faint voice, while leaning with one hand on the table and the other pressed on the region of the heart, 'written me to the effect that all my recent and too often renewed acceptances and promissory notes have come—how, I know not—into his possession, and that if I do not liquidate them forthwith everything we have—even to the chairs we sit on—will be seized, and myself too probably arrested, while you, Alison—you, my loved Ailie,' he continued, with sudden pathos in his voice—'will have neither house nor home!'