His mother tried in a weak, feminine sort of way, Stephen thought, to excuse his father’s act. He had never let them even guess at home, she said that the big house and all the servants, the stable full of expensive cars, and the proportionate demands in way of clothes and entertaining, and contributions to various charitable institutions, were eating into his capital—had been for years.

But why hadn’t he? What kindness had it been to them? It was beyond Stephen’s young comprehension that his father, like some weak, inexperienced bank clerk, could be tempted into “borrowing” even a portion of the funds entrusted to him.

Borrowing! That is what his father’s friends and associates called it, when they talked to Stephen. They tried to soften the facts to him, these kind, old, pitying men, who felt sorry to look upon the destruction of so young a man’s career, Stephen supposed. Well, there was one satisfaction. Thank heaven, his father hadn’t taken liberties with the legacies left to him and Fanny by their grandfather, nor touched the solid securities packed away years ago in his mother’s safe-deposit box. By scraping everything together, none of the estates which had been entrusted to his father needed to suffer at all. The kind old men told Stephen that he and his mother and Fanny felt, just as he did, that the only thing for them to do was to wipe out his father’s dishonesty as far as possible.

Stephen was glad, too, that his mother and Fanny agreed with him that it would be unbearable to continue to live in Reddington. As soon as the big brown house, and the automobiles, and the servants were disposed of, they would disappear as quietly as possible. Fanny and his mother would go to Chicago and conceal themselves as best they could. There would be little for them to live on. Only the insurance policy. Stephen would, of course, get a job somewhere, as soon as he could. Oh, no, he wouldn’t finish at the law school! He couldn’t afford the time. He never wanted to see the law school again! He never wanted to see anything again, or anybody that recalled to him his old bright hopes and ambitions, he said.

“Oh, no, least of all Helen Dane,” he shuddered, replying to his mother’s timid reminder that Helen had sent her card to him, with a message written on it to come and see her.

Stephen was thankful that there had never been anything serious between him and Helen. There might have been. It had seemed last summer as if there probably would have been, but not now—never now! There was no girl in Reddington, no girl anywhere, whom he would ever ask to bear the name of Dallas.

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