But matters now grew worse with Mr Davenant, and bankruptcy was looming in the distance. His affairs were now more involved than ever; and even the L.5000, had he obtained it, would not now have availed to restore his sinking credit. In this dilemma he proposed raising money on the security of the railway shares, but here Selina showed the result of her education in worldly wisdom.
'Nonsense, papa,' was her dutiful remark in reply to this suggestion; 'it will do you no good, you know, and only render me and Lucy poorer. I am of age; and as the shares are mine, you can't sell them, you know,' she added in some confusion; for even her selfishness could not quite supply her with a proper amount of nonchalance in thus speaking to her father.
'I can sell them with your permission, of course?' said Mr Davenant, hardly comprehending the full extent of her meaning.
'Yes, I know. But you see, papa, it's bad enough for me as it is: I shall not have the fortune I was always taught to expect; and really, as it wont do you any real good, I think I should be very unwise to let you sell them.'
'You refuse your permission then?' exclaimed the father. Selina bowed her head, and left the room. Mr Davenant clasped his hands in anguish, not at the failure of this last hope, but at the agonizing ingratitude of his favourite child, and wept; and while he yet groaned aloud in his misery, Lucy entered the room. It is always a sad thing to behold a man weep; but to Lucy, who now, for the first time in her life, beheld her father under the influence of feeling, it was a great and painful shock. But it is one of the first instincts of woman to console, and in a moment she was kneeling by his side, her arms wound about his neck, her tears mingling with his. All his harshness to her—the little affection he had ever shown her—the many times her love had been repulsed—all was forgotten; she only remembered that he was her father, and in trouble, and either of these ties was sufficient to insure her affectionate sympathy. Mr Davenant felt deeply the ingratitude of Selina; but yet more intensely did the tenderness of his youngest child cut him to the soul. It was a lesson which he never forgot; and from that day he was a better, if not, according to his former creed, a wiser man. He told Lucy the whole story of the railway shares, and his impending ruin. Lucy intreated him to use her portion of the shares immediately; and though his recent grief had humbled him, and rendered him less selfish—and he was unwilling to take advantage of her generosity—yet as she assured him that she would never accept the money which was originally intended for his use, he at length consented. But the tide of ruin was not to be so easily stemmed, and the stricken man and his bewildered wife now patiently listened to their only remaining daughter; for Selina had gone with some friends, and with her 'shares' in her pocket, to Normandy, there to join Mr Forde, and be married to him before he became aware that his bride's father was a ruined man. Lucy advised her father to go to Mr Atkinson, tell him the whole truth, and intreat his assistance. 'He is so kind-hearted, dear papa, that he will do what you want: he will lend you sufficient money to relieve you from these embarrassments, and then you will do very well.'
Mr Davenant clung to this hope like a drowning man to a frail plank. He set off instantly for Gloucestershire. With what intense anxiety Mrs Davenant and Lucy awaited his return may be imagined. They received no letter from him; but three days after his departure he returned, looking pale, weary, and hopeless.
Mr Atkinson had died a few days before he had arrived at his house. He had been present at the reading of the will, which was dated only a month back. In it he bequeathed the bulk of his property to that same 'candid Cousin John' whose wisdom Mr Davenant had so decried. 'Because,' said the will, 'I have reason to know that he is in difficulties; and as he has a wife and family depending on him, he must need the money more than my other nephew, Samuel Davenant, whom I visited a short time since for the express purpose of seeing if his affairs were prosperous. I have reason to suppose that they are so, and that any increase to his means, so far from adding to his prosperity, would induce him to speculate, and perhaps so lose all he has acquired by years of industry. Therefore I revoke a former bequest to him of L.20,000, and bequeath it instead to my third nephew, George Charles Atkinson,' &c. &c.
'You were right, Lucy!' exclaimed Mr Davenant penitently; 'the truth is the safest, surest policy.'
Fortitude and perseverance were among the virtues of both Mr Davenant and his wife. They met their difficulties steadily and firmly, and got ultimately through them with credit. But they were now too old to commence life anew, and gladly availed themselves of the affectionate intreaty of Lucy and her husband—for Arthur Meredith was now a flourishing barrister—to take up their house with them.
Selina was not happy in her marriage. Her husband's large property was all imaginary; he was, in fact, a ruined spendthrift; and all they had to subsist on after they were married was the money arising from those oft-named railway shares. Selina could not reproach her husband for deceiving her, for she had deceived him. Not till they had been three weeks wedded did Mr Forde know that his bride's father was ruined, and that he need expect no marriage portion further than that she already had. 'Had you told me the truth,' he said to her, when one day she reproached him with his poverty, 'I would have told you the truth. But I thought you would be a rich woman, and that your fortune would be sufficient to support us both.' Selina could not reply.