E. Nesbit

“ There was no work to do. Stephen was a solicitor by trade; but, in fact and perforce, an idler. No business came to him. All day long the steps of clients sounded on the dirty, old wooden staircase—clients for Robinson on the second, for Jones on the fourth, but none for Guillemot on the third. Even now steps were coming, though it was only ten o’clock. The young man glanced at the marmalade jar, at the crooked cloth stained with tea, which his laundress had spread for his breakfast.
“Suppose it is a client——” He broke off with a laugh. ”

“ Miss Rainham had laughed, not heartlessly, but happily. “Thank Heaven, I’ve enough to be happy myself and make heaps of other people happy too. And the first step is that no one’s to know I’m rich, so remember that we are two high-school teachers on a holiday.”
“I loathe play-acting,” Constance had said, but she had submitted, and now she sat sketching, and Rosamund in her white gown watched the seagulls and shrimpers from under the sea-wall of Lymchurch. ”

“ I can’t face you or any one. I wish to God I’d never told you anything about Rosamund Rainham’s money. There isn’t any money: it was all in the Crystal Oil Co. No one had the least idea that it wasn’t good, but I feel as if I ought to have known. There’s a beggarly hundred or so in consols: that’s the end of her million. It wasn’t really my fault, of course. She doesn’t blame me.—Yours,
“Stephen Guillemot.”
Then he opened her letters—read them all—in the order of the dates on the postmarks, for even in love Andrew was an orderly man—read them with eyes that pricked and smarted. ”

“ I could never have been anything to you but your loving friend,
“Rosamund.”
He read it through twice; it was a greater shock to him than Stephen’s letter had been. Then he understood. The Millionairess might stoop to woo a poor lover whose pride had fought with and conquered his love: the girl with only a “beggarly hundred in consols” had her pride too.
The early October dusk filled the room. Andrew caught up the bag he had brought with him, slammed the door, and blundered down the stairs. He caught a passing hansom in Fleet Street and the last train to Lymchurch. ”

“ But Rosamund had turned, and was walking quickly away over the sand.
Stephen filled a pipe and lighted it before he said: “You’ve made good use of your time, old man. I congratulate you.” His tone was cold.
“There is no reason why I should not make good use of my time,” Dornington answered, and his tone had caught the chill of the other’s.
“None whatever. You have secured the prize, and I congratulate you. Whether it’s fair to the girl is another question.”
In moments of agitation a man instinctively feels for his pipe. It was now Dornington’s turn to fill and light. ”

“ You have nothing to forgive.”
“No, nothing—if you had left off loving me? Have you? Is it true?”
“Good-bye!” she said. “You are staying at the ‘Ship’?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t let’s part in anger. I shall be on the sea-wall in the morning. Let’s part friends, then.”
In the morning Andrew went into the fresh air. The trees, still gold in calmer homes, stood almost leafless in wild, windy Lymchurch. He stood in the sunlight, and in spite of himself some sort of gladness came to him through the crisp October air. Then the ping of a bicycle bell sounded close behind him, and there was Stephen. ”

“ Then the invalid lady died, and Stephen’s father awoke from his dreams amid his old books, as he had a way of doing now and then, enquired into the circumstances of the boy, Andrew Dornington, and, finding him friendless and homeless, took him into his home to be Stephen’s little brother and friend. Then the long happy time when the three children were always together: walking, boating, birdsnesting, reading, playing and quarrelling; the storm of tears from Rosamund when the boys went to College ”

“ It all seems like a dream, to have been so rich for a little while, and to have done nothing with it except,” she added with a laugh and a glance at her fur-trimmed dress, “to buy a most extravagant number of white dresses. ”

“ Yes. Well, Guillemot, it’s no good making a row about it; I don’t want to quarrel with my best friend. Go along to my place, will you? Or stay: come and let me introduce you to Miss Grant, and you can walk up with her; she’ll show you where I live. I’m going for a bit of a walk.”
Five minutes later Stephen, in response to Rosamund’s beckoning hand at the window, was following Miss Grant up the narrow flagged path leading to the cottage which Rosamund had taken. And ten minutes later Andrew Dornington was striding along the road to the station with a Gladstone bag in his hands. ”