"In any manner you please. But, Aurora, why see these people? Why listen to their disgraceful demands? Why not tell the truth?"
"Ah, why, indeed!" she said thoughtfully. "Ask me no questions, dear papa; but let me have the money to-morrow, and I promise you that this shall be the very last you hear of my old troubles."
She made this promise with such perfect confidence that her father was inspired with a faint ray of hope.
"Come, darling papa," she said; "your room is near mine; let us go up-stairs together."
She entwined her arm in his, and led him up the broad staircase; only parting from him at the door of his room.
Mr. Floyd summoned his daughter into the study early the next morning, while Talbot Bulstrode was opening his letters, and Lucy strolling up and down the terrace with John Mellish.
"I have telegraphed for the money, my darling," the banker said. "One of the clerks will be here with it by the time we have finished breakfast."
Mr. Floyd was right. A card inscribed with the name of a Mr. George Martin was brought to him during breakfast.
"Mr. Martin will be good enough to wait in my study," he said.
Aurora and her father found the clerk seated at the open window, looking admiringly through festoons of foliage, which clustered round the frame of the lattice, into the richly-cultivated garden. Felden Woods was a sacred spot in the eyes of the junior clerks in Lombard Street, and a drive to Beckenham in a Hansom cab on a fine summer's morning, to say nothing of such chance refreshment as pound-cake and old Madeira, or cold fowl and Scotch ale, was considered no small treat.