s were."

"Well, sir, having procured this sum of money, you were straightway taken
into Mr. Brough's confidence. You were received into his house, and from
third clerk speedily became head clerk; in which post you were found at
the disappearance of your worthy patron!"

"Sir, you have no right to question me, to be sure; but here are a
hundred of our shareholders, and I'm not unwilling to make a clean breast
of it," said I, pressing Mary's hand. "I certainly was the head clerk.
And why? Because the other gents left the office. I certainly was
received into Mr. Brough's house. And why? Because, sir, my aunt _had
more money to lay out_. I see it all clearly now, though I could not
understand it then; and the proof that Mr. Brough wanted my aunt's money,
and not me, is that, when she came to town, our Director carried her by
force out of my house to Fulham, and never so much as thought of asking
me or my wife thither. Ay, sir, and he would have had her remaining
money, had not her lawyer from the country prevented her disposing of it.
Before the concern finally broke, and as soon as she heard there was
doubt concerning it, she took back her shares--scrip shares they were,
sir, as you know--and has disposed of them as she thought fit. Here,
sir, and gents," says I, "you have the whole of the history as far as
regards me. In order to get her only son a means of livelihood, my
mother placed her little money with the Company--it is lost. My aunt
invested larger sums with it, which were to have been mine one day, and
they are lost too; and here am I, at the end of four years, a disgraced
and ruined man. Is there anyone present, however much he has suffered by
the failure of the Company, that has had worse fortune through it than
I?"

"Mr. Titmarsh," says Mr. Commissioner, in a much more friendly way, and
at the same time casting a glance at a newspaper reporter that was
sitting hard by, "your story is not likely to get into the newspapers;
for, as you say, it is a private affair, which you had no need to speak
of unless you thought proper, and may be considered as a confidential
conversation between us and the other gentlemen here. But if it _could_
be made public, it might do some good, and warn people, if they _will_ be
warned, against the folly of such enterprises as that in which you have
been engaged. It is quite clear from your story, that you have been
deceived as grossly as anyone of the persons present