The general had lifted up a deprecating hand. "No need, no need." This from the family lawyer. "Flora already knows all. And bravely has she borne the tidings. Ah, my good sir, Flora is a true Mackenzie." "But you might have told me long ago," was all she had said as she seated herself on a low stool by her father's knee. "O father, I could have borne it, and could have comforted you, now that poor mother has gone!" There was silence for a time, broken by Flora's low sobbing; broken, too, by the sweet, mellow fluting of a blackbird in the garden shrubbery. General Mackenzie was the first to speak. "Children," he said, "I have been for many a day like one living in a dream, call it if you will a fool's paradise. But I have awakened at last to the stern realities of life. It is better, perhaps, as it is, for we now know the very worst. You will believe me when I say that if I have hidden the truth from you, it was because I feared to vex you, or render you unhappy, while yet there was hope. But now," he added, "all is over, all is lost, or seems to be." "Nay, nay, my good old friend," cried Richards; "you must not really take so gloomy a view as that of the matter." "This grand old house," continued the general as if he had heard him not, "this estate, with all its beauty of domains, that was presented to my ancestors by Charles the First himself, with its lands and its lakes, its gardens and its trees, and which was prized by my father almost as much as our ancient home in the Highlands of Scotland, has been wasted, has been frittered away, through my intrinsic folly." "Sir, sir," said Richards, "you are too hard on yourself now." "Nay, my good friend, nay; that I cannot be. You have ever been faithful to our family; but I repeat it before you, and before my only son and daughter here: the estates are lost through my own folly, and through the imbecility, the madness, Richards, of my pride. Now in a month's time, if I do not pay off the mortgage, Keane, your partner, will foreclose." It was at this moment that Jack sprang up from his seat as though a serpent had stung him. He took a few rapid strides up and down the floor, then, his calmness in some degree restored, he confronted the general. "Did you say Keane would foreclose, father--Keane?" "I said Keane, boy--Griffin, Keane, and Co. The old man Keane is my only creditor. But why should the knowledge of this affect you so?" "Because, father--and oh, forgive me, for I ought to have told you before--because the heartless old man has been playing for your estates; he has won, and he has in a manner ruined you. But his daughter Gerty has been playing a crueller game than even his: she has won my heart, and having won it, having torn it from me, she has trampled it bleeding under foot. I can never love again."