"When you proposed to me and I accepted you, I was in a very different position from that of to-day. Then I was supposed to be--nay, I supposed myself--a very rich woman. I was the daughter of a man beloved, honoured, and respected; a member of a house which, if not equal to your own in the past annals of the country, might at least mix with it on equality and hold its own amongst gentlemen. All this is now changed. My dear father is no more, my large fortune is gone, and I am left with next to nothing.
"That you have asked me to become your wife for myself alone, I feel sure of. I am certain that no thought of riches influenced you in your choice: that you would take me now as willingly as in the old days. But instinct--or presentiment tells me that others will step in to interfere between us, and to enjoin a separation. Should this be the case--should your father's consent, once given, now be withdrawn--then all must be at an end between us, and I will restore you your liberty. Without the fall approval of Sir Richard, you cannot attempt to marry me; neither should I, without it, consent to become your wife.
"If, on the other hand, that approval is still held out to us both as freely as of yore, I have only to add what you know so well--that I am yours, now as ever.
"Mary Ursula Castlemaine."
The letter written, she hesitated no longer about the necessity or wisdom of the step. Sealing it, she despatched it by a trusty messenger to Sir Richard's house just beyond the town.
The news of the failure of the bank and death of its master, had reached Sir Richard Blake-Gordon when he was at a dinner party. It fell upon him with startling effect. For a moment he felt half paralyzed: and then the blood once more took its free course through his veins as he remembered that his son's marriage was yet a thing of the future.
"Never," he said to himself with energy. "Never, as long as I live. I may have a battle with William; but I could always twist him round my fingers. In that respect he is his poor mother all over. No such weakness about me. Failed for millions! Good heavens, what an escape! We shall be quite justified in breaking with the daughter; and she and William have both sense enough to see it."
He was not of those who put off disagreeable things until they will be put off no longer. That very night, meeting his son when he got home, he began, after expressing regret for the banker's sudden death.
"A sad affair about the bank! Who would have expected it?"
"Who, indeed!" returned William Blake-Gordon. "Everyone thought the bank as safe as the Bank of England. Safer, if anything."