stle, where Falloden, or his
father, would receive him.

Then the solicitor departed, and Falloden was left to pace up and down
the dismal room, his hands in his pockets--deep in thought.

He looked back upon a fortnight of unbroken worry and distress. The news
with which his father had received him on his return from Oxford had
seemed to him at first incredible. But the facts on which it was based
were only too substantial, and his father, broken in health and nerve,
now that silence was once thrown aside, poured out upon his son a flood
of revelation and confession that soon made what had happened tragically
clear. It was the familiar story of wealth grasping at yet more wealth,
of the man whose judgment and common sense begin to play him false, when
once the intoxication of money has gone beyond a certain point. Dazzled
by some first speculative successes, Sir Arthur had become before long a
gambler over half the world, in Canada, the States, Egypt, Argentina.
One doubtful venture supported another, and the City, no less than the
gambler himself, was for a time taken in. But the downfall of a great
Egyptian company, which was to have extracted untold wealth from a strip
of Libyan desert, had gradually but surely brought down everything else
in its train. Blow after blow fell, sometimes rapidly, sometimes
tardily. Sir Arthur tried every expedient known to the financier _in
extremis_, descending ever lower in the scale of credit and reputation;
and in vain. One tragic day in June, after a long morning with the
Gregory partners, Sir Arthur came home to the splendid house in
Yorkshire, knowing that nothing now remained but to sell the estates,
and tell Douglas that his father had ruined him. Lady Laura's settlement
was safe; and on that they must live.

The days of slow realisation, after Douglas's return, had tried both
father and son severely. Sir Arthur was worn out and demoralised by long
months of colossal but useless effort to retrieve what he had done.
Falloden, with his own remorse, and his own catastrophe to think over,
was called on to put it aside, to think for and help his father. He had
no moral equipment--no trained character--equal to the task. But
mercifully for them both, his pride came into play; his shrewd
intelligence also, and his affection for his father--the most penetrable
spot so far in his hard and splendid youth. He had done his best--a
haughty, ungracious best--but still he had done it, and