"We could have done well enough on an ordinary occasion," he said, "and Mr. Vernon generally settles everything before he goes; but I thought he was only absent for the day. Mrs. Vernon," he cried, suddenly, "can't you help us? can't you help us? It will be ruin for you too."
She stared at him for a moment without speaking, and then—
"You make me quite wretched. I don't understand. I have only a little money in the house. Would that do any good?" she said.
"How much have you?" said the clerk in his trouble.
She ran to a pretty ornamental desk and opened it nervously.
"I dare say there may be about twenty pounds," she said.
He laughed loudly, harshly, a laugh that seemed to echo through the large, unoccupied room.
"If it were twenty thousand it might do something," he said.
"Sir!" said Mrs. John Vernon, standing in a fine attitude of displeasure by her desk, holding it open with one hand. She looked like a picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence, her scarf, for she wore a scarf, hanging half off her pretty white shoulders, caught upon one equally white arm, her ringlets waving on her cheek. His laugh was rude, and then he was only a clerk. She was all angry scorn from the high knot of brown hair on the top of her head to the point of her sandalled shoe.