"You have done wonders," said Rupert, standing beside her in the little garden which commanded a view of the Lee, winding away through pleasant meadows. "It is really a marvellous little nest to have constructed out of your materials, but," he added suddenly, "Archie does not like it—Archie is breaking his heart here."
"Archie will have to like it," returned Dolly, and there was a tone in her voice Rupert had never heard in it before. "There is no good in a man kicking against the pricks, and pining for things even those who love him best cannot give him. I shall have to tell him, Rupert; I feel that, whether ill or well, it is time he took his share of the burden with me. The sooner he knows, the sooner he will be able to look our position straight in the face. I wish I was not such a coward. I cannot endure the idea of letting him into the secret that everything has gone, that there is not a thing left."
She spoke less passionately than despairingly. In truth, the change from which she had anticipated such good results, proved the last straw which broke her back.
She, understanding their position, had felt thankful to realise that even so humble a home was possible for them until her husband's health should be re-established, and the sight of his ill-concealed despair when he beheld the cottage, proved a shock as great to her as his new home to Mortomley.
For months and months she had been reconciling herself to the inevitable—schooling herself to forget the past and look forward to a future when Archie would take an interest in the modest little factory she and Lang were to prepare, and learn to find happiness in the tiny home she had tried so hard to beautify—but it came upon him suddenly. He had not realised the full change in his circumstances when he left Homewood, or when he struggled back to consciousness from long illness at Upper Clapton; not when he had to attend at Mr. Swanland's offices; not when the Thames Street warehouse was closed, and one of his own clerks started a feeble business there on the strength of his late employer's name and connection; not when the last sale took place at Homewood—no, not once till on the morning after his arrival at Wood Cottage, (so Dolly christened the new home), he rose early, and walking round the house and surveying his small territory, comprehended vaguely there was something still for him to know; that Dolly was keeping some terrible secret.
"He knows all about it as well as you, you may depend," Rupert said in reply to Dolly's last sentence; "nothing you can tell him now will be news to him."
But Dolly shook her head.
Her instinct was clearer than Rupert's reason, and she felt certain if her husband only knew the worst, he would nerve himself to face it more bravely than he could this vague intangible trouble.
"I will tell him," she declared to Rupert, and then like a coward put off doing so till Mortomley himself broke the ice by asking,