"Did you get anything to eat yourself?" asked Mrs. Liddell.
"Yes; Mr. Newton, who is really kind and friendly under his cool, precise exterior, sent for some cakes. He staid a good while. I think he has a good deal of influence on Mr. Liddell. (I can hardly call him uncle.) He was more polite when Mr. Newton was present. When he was going away he said, 'I am happy to say I have convinced Mr. Liddell that you are his niece, and if you and your mother will call upon me at noon to-morrow, the loan you wish for can be arranged, if you will agree to certain conditions, which I should like to explain both to you and to Mrs. Liddell.' He gave me his card. Here it is. He has written 'twelve to one' on it."
"They must be very hard conditions if we cannot agree to them," said Mrs. Liddell, taking out her porte-monnaie and putting the card into it. "This is indeed a Godsend, Katie, dear. I am thankful you had the pluck to attack the old lion in his den."
"Lion! Hyena rather. Yet I cannot help feeling sorry for him. Think of passing away without a soul to care whether you live or die—without one pleasant memory!"
"His memories are anything but pleasant," returned Mrs. Liddell, gravely. "His wife, of whom I believe he was fond in his own way, left him when their only child, a son, was about ten years old. This seemed to turn his blood to gall. He took an unnatural dislike to his poor boy, and treated him so badly that he ran away to sea. Poor fellow? he used sometimes to write to your father. Their mutual dislike to John Liddell was a kind of bond between them. It is an unhappy story, for, as I told you, he was afterward killed at the gold diggings.
"Very dreadful!" said Katherine, thoughtfully. "What a cruel visiting of the mother's sin on the unfortunate child!—that horrible bit of the decalogue! With all his icy cold selfishness Mr. Liddell is a gentleman. His voice is refined, and except when he was carried away by hi-fury against his roguish housekeeper he seems to have a certain self-respect. After Mr. Newton went away I read for a long time all the money articles in two penny papers, for the Times had been taken away. Then I wrote a couple of letters, and all my uncle said was: 'So it seems you really are my niece. Well, I hope you know more of the value of money than either your father or mother.' I could not let that pass, and said, 'My father died when I was too young to know him; but no one could manage money better nor with greater care than my mother.' He stared at me. 'I am glad to hear it,' he returned, very dryly. He had a note from his stock-broker in reply to one I wrote for him yesterday. He seemed greatly pleased with it. He kept chuckling and murmuring, 'Just in time, just in time!'"
"Perhaps he will fancy you bring him luck."
"I am awfully afraid he will want me to go and read to him every day, for when I was directing one of the letters he said, as though to himself, 'If she can read and write for me I need not buy a new pair of spectacles.' It would be too dreadful to be with that cynical hyena every day."
"Oh, when he gets a good servant he will not want you."
"I hope not."