“The will, I am afraid, is only a magnificent ‘might have been,’” said Mr. Sherrett.  “There may be something secured; there ought to be.  Mrs. Argenter had a small property, I believe.  Otherwise, as such things turn out, I should suppose there would be less than nothing.”

“What will they do?” The question came from Aunt Euphrasia, again.  “Can’t somebody help them?  There is so much money in the world.”

“Yes, Effie.  And there is gold in the mines.  And there are plenty of kind affections in the world, too; but there’s loneliness and broken heartedness, for all that.  The difficulty always is to bring things together.”

“I suppose that is just what people were made for.”

“It will be one more family of precisely that sort whom nobody can help, directly, and who scarcely know how to help themselves.  The hardest kind of cases.”

“It’s an awful spill-out, this time,” Rodney said to Amy, as she followed him, after her usual fashion, to the piazza, when dinner was over.  “And no mistake!”

Rodney had brought a cigar with him, but he had forgotten his match, and he stood crumbling the end of it, frowning his brows together in a way they were not often used to.

“Will they have to go away?” asked Amy.

“Out of that house?  Of course.  They’ll be just tipped out of everything.”

“How dreadful it will be for Sylvie!”

“She won’t stand round lamenting.  I’ve seen her tipped out before.  Amy, I’ll tell you what; you ought to stick by.  Maybe she won’t want you, at first; but you ought to do it.  Father,”—­as Mr. Sherrett came out with his evening paper to his cane reclining chair,—­“you’ll go and see Mrs. Argenter, shall you not?”

“Why, yes, if I could be of any service.  But one wouldn’t like to intrude.  There are executors to the will.  I don’t know that it is quite my place.”

“I don’t believe there will be much intruding—­of your sort.  And the executors have got nothing to do now.  Who are they?”

“Jobling and Cardwell, I believe.  Men down town.  Perhaps she might like to see a neighbor.  Yes, I think I will go.  You can drive me round, Rodney, some evening soon.  Whom has she, of her own people, I wonder?”

“Only her sister, Mrs. Lowndes, you know.  The brother-in-law isn’t much, I imagine.”

“Stephen A. Lowndes?  No.  Broken-down and out of the world.  He couldn’t advise to any purpose.  I fancy Argenter has been holding him up.”

“I think they’ll be very glad to see you, sir.”

Rodney drove his father over the next night.  Mr. Sherrett went in alone.  Rodney sat in the chaise outside.

Mr. Sherrett waited some minutes after he had sent up his card, and then Sylvie came down to him, looking pale in her black dress, and with the trouble really in her young eyes, over which the brows bent with a strange heaviness.

“I could not persuade mother to come down,” she said.  “She does not feel able to see anybody.  But I wanted to thank you for coming, Mr. Sherrett.”