Being unable to silence her husband, Mrs. Graham-Shute had now turned her attention to occupying “dear cousin John” with conversation, so that William’s delinquencies should escape his notice. Otherwise, it is possible that John Bradfield might have been exasperated into some heroic measure to stop his old friend’s tongue. As it was, Mr. Graham-Shute’s kindly “Dear me, yes, that was curious!” encouraged Marrable to go on: “Let me see, where had I got to? Oh, yes, I remember, Bradfield had told me he meant to do away with himself; he was so down on his luck, poor chap! I didn’t know what to say to him; the little capital I had gone out with was all gone; when who should we come across but the old chum we had gone out with, the only one of the three who had done any good--Gilbert Wryde!” At the mention of this name, Mr. Graham-Shute suddenly put down his nut-crackers, and leaned back in his chair. “Ah!” cried he, “that’s the name I’ve been trying to remember; I knew there were three of you who went out to Australia together, and I couldn’t remember the name of the third. I never saw him, but I’ve read some of his letters to John when they were little more than lads; and they were full of most uncommon sense for such a young chap. I thought to myself then that he ought to get on. So he did, did he? Gilbert Wryde!” As he repeated the name deliberately and slowly, to impress it upon his memory, both John Bradfield and Chris looked up, rather startled. Chris was the more impressed of the two, for she had not been expecting to hear the name, while John Bradfield had. Quite innocent of the effect his information was producing, Marrable resumed his story. “Get on! I believe you, as well as our friend John here himself, and in half the time. He was the right sort, too, old Gilbert, and he took us by the hand, and set us on our legs again, and there was no more talk of suicide after that. He set me up in business in Melbourne, and he took John away with him up country, where he’d made his own fortune at sheep-farming, and where he evidently put him in the way of making his. Poor Wryde! He did not live long to enjoy his fortune. I never saw him again.” John Bradfield had been listening to this speech with only the smallest pretence of attending to what his cousin Maude was saying. Marrable, catching his eye, and being in too jovial a mood to understand the menace in his host’s expression, turned to him with the direct question: “Ah, John, you wouldn’t be in the position you are to-day if it hadn’t been for Gilbert Wryde, would you?” John Bradfield’s face was as white as his friend’s was rosy. He answered at once, in a hard, metallic tone: “We did each other mutual good service, Wryde and I. I’m not likely to forget him, certainly.” “Ah!” pursued Marrable, “if he’d only been alive and here to-day, it would have been a merry meeting indeed, eh, John?” CHAPTER XXII. LEFT OUT IN THE COLD.