`Miss Bray expects an enclosure perhaps,' said Nicholas, speaking very distinctly, and with an emphasis she could scarcely misunderstand. `My employer is absent from England, or I should have brought a letter with me. I hope she will give me time--a little time--I ask a very little time.'

`If that is all you come about, sir,' said Mr Bray, `you may make yourself easy on that head. Madeline, my dear, I didn't know this person was in your debt?'

`A--a trifle, I believe,' returned Madeline, faintly.

`I suppose you think now,' said Bray, wheeling his chair round and confronting Nicholas, `that, but for such pitiful sums as you bring here, because my daughter has chosen to employ her time as she has, we should starve?'

`I have not thought about it,' returned Nicholas.

`You have not thought about it!' sneered the invalid. `You know you have thought about it, and have thought that, and think so every time you come here. Do you suppose, young man, that I don't know what little purse-proud tradesmen are, when, through some fortunate circumstances, they get the upper hand for a brief day--or think they get the upper hand--of a gentleman?'

`My business,' said Nicholas respectfully, `is with a lady.'

`With a gentleman's daughter, sir,' returned the sick man, `and the pettifogging spirit is the same. But perhaps you bring orders eh? Have you any fresh orders for my daughter, sir?'

Nicholas understood the tone of triumph in which this interrogatory was put; but remembering the necessity of supporting his assumed character, produced a scrap of paper purporting to contain a list of some subjects for drawings which his employer desired to have executed; and with which he had prepared himself in case of any such contingency.

`Oh!' said Mr Bray. `These are the orders, are they?'

`Since you insist upon the term, sir--yes,' replied Nicholas.

`Then you may tell your master,' said Bray, tossing the paper back again, with an exulting smile, `that my daughter--Miss Madeline Bray--condescends to employ herself no longer in such labours as these; that she is not at his beck and call, as he supposes her to be; that we don't live upon his money, as he flatters himself we do; that he may give whatever he owes us, to the first beggar that passes his shop, or add it to his own profits next time he calculates them; and that he may go to the devil for me. That's my acknowledgment of his orders, sir!'

`And this is the independence of a man who sells his daughter as he has sold that weeping girl!' thought Nicholas.

The father was too much absorbed with his own exultation to mark the look of scorn which, for an instant, Nicholas could not have suppressed had he been upon the rack. `There,' he continued, after a short silence, `you have your message and can retire--unless you have any further--ha!--any further orders.'

`I have none,' said Nicholas; `nor, in the consideration of the station you once held, have I used that or any other word which, however harmless in itself, could be supposed to imply authority on my part or dependence on yours. I have no orders, but I have fears--fears that I will express, chafe as you may-- fears that you may be consigning that young lady to something worse than supporting you by the labour of her hands, had she worked herself dead. These are my fears, and these fears I found upon your own demeanour. Your conscience will tell you, sir, whether I construe it well or not.'

`For Heaven's sake!' cried Madeline, interposing in alarm between them. `Remember, sir, he is ill.'