old-fashioned folks used to say--'God be with you!' If there be any
meaning in the phrase, it is conveyed to you in all sincerity by
your old friend,
"DAVID HELMSLEY."

"Cryptic, positively cryptic!" murmured Sir Francis, as he folded up the
letter and put it by. "There's no clue to anything anywhere. What does
he mean by a bad speculation?--a loss 'on the whole gamble'? I know--or
at least I thought I knew--every number on which he had put his money.
It won't affect his financial position, he says. I should think not! It
would take a bigger Colossus than that of Rhodes to overshadow Helmsley
in the market! But he's got some queer notion in his mind,--some scheme
for finding an heir to his millions,--I'm sure he has! A fit of romance
has seized him late in life,--he wants to be loved for himself
alone,--which, of course, at his age, is absurd! No one loves old
people, except, perhaps (in very rare cases), their children,--if the
children are not hopelessly given over to self and the hour, which they
generally are." He sighed, and his brows contracted. He had a
spendthrift son and a "rapid" daughter, and he knew well enough how
little he could depend upon them for either affection or respect.

"Old age is regarded as a sort of crime nowadays," he continued,
apostrophising the dingy walls of his office, as he took his
walking-stick and prepared to leave the premises--"thanks to the
donkey-journalism of the period which brays down everything that is not
like itself--mere froth and scum. And unlike our great classic teachers
who held that old age was honourable and deserved the highest place in
the senate, the present generation affects to consider a man well on the
way to dotage after forty. God bless me!--what fools there are in this
twentieth century!--what blatant idiots! Imagine national affairs
carried on in the country by its young men! The Empire would soon became
a mere football for general kicking! However, there's one thing in this
Helmsley business that I'm glad of"--and his eyes twinkled--"I believe
the Sorrels have lost their game! Positively, I think Miss Lucy has
broken her line, and that the fish has gone _without_ her hook in its
mouth! Old as he is, David is not too old to outwit a woman! I gave him
a hint, just the slightest hint in the world,--and I think he's taken
it. Anyhow, he's gone,--booked for Southampton. And from Southampton a
man