She did not answer, but she touched his arm with her hand entreatingly.
Looking down at the face upraised to his, he saw her eyes were full of tears. Lose Homewood! why it had never looked fairer than it did at that moment, with the evening sun shining athwart its lawns. Lose Homewood! where she had been so happy; it would be worse than death.
"Oh! Rupert," she cried at last, and she clung to him entreatingly, "you did not mean it—say you did not."
"I declare Dolly, you are prettier than Lenore," he answered irrelevantly, as it may seem; but the fact was, all at once, in that moment of mental anguish, of pathetic helplessness, he saw something in the woman's face he had never beheld there before—something grief had developed already, a grace and a beauty hitherto concealed.
"Dolly," he went on vehemently, "if I can keep Homewood for you I will; but you must help, you must not let Archie turn back from the battle. It is true, dear, I do not go on my own judgment; if he is not firm now, we shall all be lost!"
As he spoke he was unlocking the postern door, which admitted them to a small court which, in its turn, gave ingress to the foreman's office as well as to the more private offices of the establishment, Mr. Mortomley's own room and laboratory included.
When they entered the court, Hankins, the foreman, was fastening his door and came to meet them, swinging a great bunch of keys on his fingers in a debonnaire manner the while.
Out of respect or, shall we say, gallantry he raised his hat to Mrs. Mortomley. Rupert's "Good evening," he answered with a nod. Mr. Hankins was a working-man of the very advanced type, who thought much of himself, and but little consequently of any one else. He was a clever fellow, as all Mortomley's picked men were, and fairly faithful and honest as the world goes now-a-days, which is not perhaps far.
But he understood his business and he did his work, and he saw that others did it also. Now that the day's labour was over, he had been, as he informed his visitors, "just taking as usual a look round to see everything was right."
"Mr. Lang gone?" asked Rupert.