“But I think,” went on the lawyer, without any notice of his interruption, “that you misunderstand the matter a little. Cossey and Son are only a trading corporation, whose object is to make money by lending it, or otherwise—at all hazards to make money. The kind of feeling that you allude to, and that might induce them, in consideration of long intimacy and close connection in the past, to forego the opportunity of so doing and even to run a risk of loss, is a thing which belongs to former generations. But the present is a strictly commercial age, and we are the most commercial of the trading nations. Cossey and Son move with the times, that is all, and they would rather sell up a dozen families who had dealt with them for two centuries than lose five hundred pounds, provided, of course, that they could do so without scandal and loss of public respect, which, where a banking house is concerned, also means a loss of custom. I am a great lover of the past myself, and believe that our ancestors’ ways of doing business were, on the whole, better and more charitable than ours, but I have to make my living and take the world as I find it, Mr. de la Molle.” “Quite so, Quest; quite so,” answered the Squire quietly. “I had no idea that you looked at these matters in such a light. Certainly the world has changed a good deal since I was a young man, and I do not think it has changed much for the better. But you will want your luncheon; it is hungry work talking about foreclosures.” Mr. Quest had not used this unpleasant word, but the Squire had seen his drift. “Come into the next room,” and he led the way to the drawing-room, where Ida was sitting reading the _Times_. “Ida,” he said, with an affectation of heartiness which did not, however, deceive his daughter, who knew how to read every change of her dear father’s face, “here is Mr. Quest. Take him in to luncheon, my love. I will come presently. I want to finish a note.” Then he returned to the vestibule and sat down in his favourite old oak chair. “Ruined,” he said to himself. “I can never get the money as things are, and there will be a foreclosure. Well, I am an old man and I hope that I shall not live to see it. But there is Ida. Poor Ida! I cannot bear to think of it, and the old place too, after all these generations—after all these generations!” CHAPTER X. THE TENNIS PARTY