The next morning, finding an opportunity to be alone with him, Bradley, with a tactful mingling of sympathy and directness informed his host that he was cognizant of the disaster that had overtaken the Bank, and delicately begged him to accept any service he could render him. “Pardon me,” he said, “if I speak as plainly to you as I would to your son: my friendship for him justifies an equal frankness to any one he loves; but I should not intrude upon your confidence if I did not believe that my knowledge and assistance might be of benefit to you. Although I did not sell my lands to Richardson or approve of his methods,” he continued, “I fear it was some suggestion of mine that eventually induced him to form the larger and more disastrous scheme that ruined the Bank. So you see,” he added lightly, “I claim a right to offer you my services.” Touched by Bradley's sincerity and discreet intelligence, Sir Robert was equally frank. During the recital of his Californian investments--a chronicle of almost fatuous speculation and imbecile enterprise--Bradley was profoundly moved at the naive ignorance of business and hopeless ingenuousness of this old habitue of a cynical world and an intriguing and insincere society, to whom no scheme had been too wild for acceptance. As Bradley listened with a half-saddened smile to the grave visions of this aged enthusiast, he remembered the son's unsophisticated simplicity: what he had considered as the “boyishness” of immaturity was the taint of the utterly unpractical Mainwaring blood. It was upon this blood, and others like it, that Oldenhurst had for centuries waxed and fattened. Bradley was true to his promise of assistance, and with the aid of two or three of his brother-millionaires, whose knowledge of the resources of the locality was no less powerful and convincing than the security of their actual wealth, managed to stay the immediate action of the catastrophe until the affairs of the Sierran Land and Timber Company could be examined and some plan of reconstruction arranged.