"No," she said firmly, "it is the truth. He had some good qualities. He was a worker. Idleness—with more money than he was accustomed to—brought temptations;—and he was very young. If he had remained poor, he might have developed into a better man."
"I won't contradict you.... Only it isn't what he might have developed into, but what he has developed into; and what fresh developments we can reasonably expect.... I see no hope. Really, I must say it. I believe, as sure as I sit here, that he'll eat you up—he'll ruin you, if you let him—he'll land you in the workhouse before you've done with him. That's why I say, get rid of him—at all costs."
But Mrs. Marsden only shook her head sadly and wearily.
Mr. Prentice stood at his window, looking down into the street, and mournfully watching her as she walked away.
She was dressed in black—she who had been so fond of bright colours never wore anything but black now; and the black was growing shabby and rusty. She seemed taller, now that she had become so much thinner; the grey hair at the sides of her forehead and the unfashionable bonnet tied with ribbons under her chin made her appear old; the florid complexion had changed to a dull white—as she turned her face, and hurried across the road, he thought that it showed almost a ghostly whiteness. And truly she was the ghost of the prosperous, radiant, richly-clothed woman that he remembered.
She had been so strong, and now she had become so weak—so pitiably weak; with a weakness that rendered it impossible to save her. His heart ached as he thought of her weakness.
She would be eaten up—soul and body. Secret information made him aware that she had sold the various stocks that she held at her marriage. The manager of the bank had regretfully told him so, at a meeting of the Masonic lodge—a secret between tried friends and trusted Masons, to go no further. She had employed the bank to sell these securities for her. In the old days she would have come to him for advice, and he would have sent the order direct to the stock-brokers; but now she was weakly afraid of his knowing anything about her suicidal transactions.
He was looking out from the same window one afternoon a few weeks later, and he saw something that really horrified him. He could scarcely believe his eyes.
Mrs. Marsden had gone swiftly down the side street, and had vanished through the front door of those shady, wicked solicitors, Hyde & Collins.