eft alone with him; you are the only son, and your place is
there.

"Dear, I know what you are going through is one of the most dreadful
things that any man is called upon to bear--your father stricken,
your mother and sister prostrate; the newspapers--for I have read
them--cruel beyond belief! But whatever they say, whatever is true
or untrue, Duane, remember that it cannot affect my regard for you
and yours.

"If I had a father, whatever he might have done, or permitted others
to do, would not, _could_ not alter my affection for him.

"Men say that women have no sense of honour. I do not know what
that sense may be if it falters when loyalty and compassion are
needed, too.

"I have read the papers; I know only what I read and what you tell
me. The rules that custom has framed to safeguard and govern
financial operations, I do not understand; but, as far as I can
comprehend, it seems to me that custom has hitherto sanctioned what
disaster has now placed under a bann. It seems to me that the very
men who now blame your father have all done successfully what he did
so disastrously.

"One thing I know: no kinder, dearer man than your father ever
lived; and I love him, and I love his family, and I will marry his
son when I am fit to do it."

And again she wrote:

"I saw in the papers that the Algonquin Trust Company had closed its
doors; I read the heartbreaking details of the crowds besieging it,
the lines of frightened people standing there in the rain all night
long. It is dreadful, terrible!

"Who are these Wall Street men who would not help the Algonquin when
they could? Why is the Clearing House so bitter? I don't know what
it all means; I read columns about poor Jack Dysart--words and
figures and technical phrases and stock quotations--and it means
nothing, and I understand nothing of it save that it is all a fierce
outcry against him and against the men with whom he was financially
involved.

"The papers are so gloomy, so eager in their search for evil, so
merciless, so exultant when scandal is unearthed, that I can
scarcely bear to read them. Why do they drag in unhappy people who
know nothing about these matters? The interview with your mother and
Naida, which you say is false, was most dreadful. How cruel men are!

"Tell them I love them dearly;