livered
reproofs were in the air. But Gardner seemed much the more melancholy
of the two.

Piles of newspapers lay scattered about the floor of the room In which
they sat. Every one of them contained sensational stories of the
prodigal's trip, with pictures, incidents and predictions. Monty was
pained, humiliated and resentful, but he was honest enough to admit the
justification of much that was said of him. He read bits of it here and
there and then threw the papers aside hopelessly. In a few weeks they
would tell another story, and quite as emphatically.

"The worst of it, Monty, is that you are the next thing to being a poor
man," groaned Gardner. "I've done my best to economize for you here at
home, as you'll see by these figures, but nothing could possibly
balance the extravagances of this voyage. They are simply appalling."

With the condemnation of his friends ringing in his troubled brain,
with the sneers of acquaintances to distress his pride, with the jibes
of the comic papers to torture him remorselessly, Brewster was fast
becoming the most miserable man in New York. Friends of former days
gave him the cut direct, clubmen ignored him or scorned him openly,
women chilled him with the iciness of unspoken reproof, and all the
world was hung with shadows. The doggedness of despair kept him up, but
the strain that pulled down on him was so relentless that the struggle
was losing its equality. He had not expected such a home-coming.

Compared with his former self, Monty was now almost a physical wreck,
haggard, thin and defiant, a shadow of the once debonair young New
Yorker, an object of pity and scorn. Ashamed and despairing, he had
almost lacked the courage to face Mrs. Gray. The consolation he once
gained through her he now denied himself and his suffering, peculiar as
it was, was very real. In absolute recklessness he gave dinner after
dinner, party after party, all on a most lavish scale, many of his
guests laughing at him openly while they enjoyed his hospitality. The
real friends remonstrated, pleaded, did everything within their power
to check his awful rush to poverty, but without success; he was not to
be stopped.

At last the furniture began to go, then the plate, then ail the
priceless bric-a-brac. Piece by piece it disappeared until the
apartments were empty and he had squandered almost all of the $40,350
arising from the sales. The servants were paid off, the apartments
relinquished, and he was