e was poverty and ruin! For himself he could give up
luxuries, and come to plain fare; but what of the others? This last news
had swept away all hope.

He sought Horace Eastman, and confronted him with his deceit and wrong:
somehow he could not bring himself to call it by its true name, crime,
and fasten it on the man there and then. There was a high-bred delicacy
about David Lawrence, a little of the old knightly chivalry that in past
times held a man back from striking a fallen foe. And then he was not
quite sure. The dishonorable work lay between the two men, and he
forbore to blame this one wrongly.

He need not have wasted his pity on this man, or have so nicely worded
his charges. Horace Eastman stood there, surprised to be sure, for he
had counted upon getting away before this turn in the wheel of fortune.
For the last year, though he had been outwardly triumphant, and had
carried business matters with a hopefully high hand, he had known what
the end must be, and made ready for it with a kind of exultant elation
at the sense of difficulties surmounted and deceptions carried on
successfully. He really despised the man before him, that he had
sufficient faith in human nature to be deceived. Starting from the
principle that all men are rogues when opportunity offers, he felt no
more guilty now, than if he had followed any other well-known law of
nature. He stood before Mr. Lawrence bland and composed: there was no
vulnerable point to strike, so he need put on no armor. Many a time he
had reasoned the matter out to his own satisfaction, that the failure of
Hope Mills was inevitable. What with losses, dull times, and extravagant
living, it would surely come. That he owed his employer any thing in
integrity and sharp fighting with adverse circumstances, would never
enter the mind of such a man, so inwrapped in self.

"There were some irregularities for your son-in-law's benefit," with an
insolent half smile, half sneer. "He was to explain them to you. There
have been accommodations for the mills occasionally. You were away: what
else could I have done?"

A cold shiver ran over David Lawrence. That part of courage allied to
hope seemed crushed out of him as if by torture. Could he drag his
daughter's name through the mire? for it would be that in any attempt to
bring Eastman to the point of responsibility.

"Do you know how much this--this defalcation will amount to?" He would
call the monstrous thing by its right