The merchant shook his head.
"Whatever it is, you are welcome to it. Perhaps ten thousand dollars"—
"Ten thousand dollars!" exclaimed Mr. Lindsay,—"you have that sum?"
"Yes,—the little property that was my father's. Let me go and get the notes, and see if I can't get some money upon them."
Mr. Lindsay rose and took the clerk's hand with a heartiness that astonished him.
"God bless you, Monroe," he said. "I may be saved, after all. Ten thousand dollars will be enough for the present pinch, and before the next acceptance is due some relief may come."
"Don't speak of thanks. I'll get the notes in a moment."
Tears stole silently down the unaccustomed furrows; the gateway of feeling was open, but the tremulous lips refused to speak. Before he could recover his self-possession, Monroe was gone. Mr. Lindsay tried to read the newspapers, but the print before his eyes conveyed no idea to his preoccupied brain. Then his thoughts turned to his beautiful villa in Brookline, and he remembered how that morning his daughter stepped lightly into the brougham with him at the back piazza, rode down the winding path between the evergreen-hedges, and, after giving him a kiss, sprang out when they reached the gate. He knew, that, when he returned in the evening, he should find her in her place under the great horse-chestnut, at the foot of the hill, ready to ride to the house. How could he meet her with the news he would have to carry? how crush the spirits of his invalid wife? Humiliating as the idea of failure was when considered in his relations with the mercantile world, the thought of home, with its changed feelings and circumstances, and the probable deprivation of habitual indulgences, was far more poignant.
It was not long before Monroe returned, but with a less buoyant air. Mr. Lindsay's spirits fell instantly. "I see it all," said he, "you can't do anything."
"Perhaps I may, yet. The notes I spoke of, though due to me, are in the hands of Mr. Sandford, Secretary of the Vortex Insurance Company. I have been there, and cannot see him. His shutting himself up, I am afraid, bodes me no good. However, I'll go again an hour hence."