‘It must be black,’ said Mrs. Tracy, decisively, ‘when you can have so few dresses. White is always the next step to colours, and we can’t afford that,--not to speak of washing. Black grenadine wears very well, and looks very nice,--on you, at least,’ Mrs. Tracy added, with a stifled sigh. She was too old for grenadine herself. To play her part aright, she wanted a rich black silk becoming her years. But it would make such a hole in the hundred pounds! She was compelled to give that up. They spent the evening with the room littered all over with ‘things,’ examining into their deficiencies,--two warriors setting out for the battle, and looking to all the crevices of their armour. And Ben down-stairs heard their soft, womanly footsteps thrill the floor over his head, and strained his ears to catch every moment they made. They seemed to have accepted his offering;--what were they going to do with himself? He sat, sick at heart, and listened while they went to and fro up-stairs to their sleeping-rooms, down again to the drawing-room. He had put his door ajar, and heard everything. Sometimes her mother called ‘Millicent!’ from below; sometimes it was the sweeter voice of the daughter that replied; and every word rang through his heart, poor fellow! as he sat and listened. That there was a commotion of some sort going on up-stairs was certain; and it was he who was the cause of it; and yet they did not call him to share the excitement. Or were they, perhaps, preparing to go away, to punish him for his presumption,--to return him his impudent gift of money, and reject his friendship? Poor Ben sat trembling, absorbed in a cruel fever of suspense all the evening. Perhaps they had meant him to be so,--perhaps it was only carelessness, their own suspense being over; but certain it is that Mrs. Tracy’s answer to his letter was not put into Ben’s hands till the movement up-stairs was quieted, and the ladies preparing to go to bed. Then Mrs. Tracy rang the bell. ‘That poor boy has not got his answer yet,--how careless, Millicent!’ she said; and Millicent half smiled as she went and sought it on the writing-table, underneath a heap of muslin. ‘It can’t matter much,’ she said, with a slight shrug of her graceful shoulders, and yet gave it with her own hands to the maid. ‘Tell Mr. Renton you forgot it,’ said Mrs. Tracy; ‘it should have gone to him some time ago.’ And this was how the evening ended for the adventurers on the eve of their campaign.