Alfred Rayner's purpose in going to Calcutta was not very definite in his own mind. He looked on it in the light of an experiment--a gamble. It was, in fact, the need of money which urged him to try to gauge the capacities of Truelove Brothers, and to make the attempt to bleed them more heavily. Zynool's loan had tided him over a period, but financial embarrassments were becoming pressing, and he decided to exhaust the possibilities of help from the quarter from whence help had come with such unfailing regularity longer than he could remember. It is true his aunt had always volubly assured him that his allowance was all the firm of Truelove Brothers had in store for him. But what were the assertions of a woman like Aunt Flo, he thought with scorn, so ignorant, so prevaricating, as he knew her to be. More than likely he had been up to this date the victim of a cruel conspiracy to defraud him of his legal rights as the son of one of the late partners of the firm. He had, however, to remind himself that his recent endeavours to probe the matter by a sharp query in a letter had elicited a firm though courteous reply that the allowance which he received was the limit of his claim. But now, since his financial condition was becoming desperate, unless indeed he changed his whole scale of living, he had resolved to make the attempt to sift the matter in person. The _dètour_ to Bombay might indeed have been well dispensed with, and had only been yielded to at the solicitation of one of the most worthless of his recent acquaintances. So it happened that when Alfred Rayner took his seat in the crowded train _en route_ for Calcutta his purse was more empty than he liked to contemplate. Prudence had even dictated that he should stoop to a seat in a third-class carriage. He sat in a corner wedged in between closely packed natives, his sun topee drawn over his eyes, the lower part of his face covered by his pocket-handkerchief. But he could not shut his ears to the discordant babel of voices round him, for every third-class passenger in the East is nothing if not vociferous. His elegant person was continually prodded by angular packages, his delicate nostrils, in spite of all precautions, assailed by the most forbidding odours. The journey seemed interminable. The slight refreshment he had been able to secure as the train was in motion he could hardly eat in such repulsive surroundings. At last the express swung into Howrah station, but even then Rayner's gnawing discomfort was not at an end. He had been congratulating himself that as he had not mentioned the hour of his arrival, he would not be met at the station. But he reckoned too much on Mr. Melford's ignorance of the time-table. On peering out of his box-like carriage window, he caught sight of his friend in eager search after his smart acquaintance of Piccadilly days, while that gentleman lurked in a third-class carriage, choke full of natives.