Now about your
story. Before anything else I must be assured that you are really
Frederic Liddell's daughter. Not that your being so gives you the
smallest claim upon me."
"I suppose it does not," returned Katherine, sadly. "Still, if you could
help us with a loan at this trying time it might be the saving of our
fortunes, and both my mother and myself would do our best to repay you."
"That's but indifferent security," said the miser with a sardonic grin.
"I feel sure that my mother's novel will succeed. It is a beautiful
story--and you know how some of the best books have been rejected--and
when it is taken they will give her at least a hundred pounds for it!"
cried Katherine, eagerly.
"Good Lord! a hundred pounds for trashy scribblings."
"They are not trash, sir," returned Katherine, with spirit.
"And what sum do you want on this first-class security?" he asked.
"Oh, thirty or forty pounds!" she said, her heart beating with wild
anxiety.
"Thirty pounds! Why, that is a fortune!"
"It would be to us," said Katherine, fighting bravely against a
desperate inclination to cry.
"And all you have to offer in exchange is a mortgage on an unpublished
novel?"
"We have nothing in the world but the furniture," she replied, with a
slight sob.
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