Isabel paced up and down the room, uttering this and kindred exclamations to nobody in particular, while an outwardly calm, inwardly very much perturbed George silently echoed the question. George Augustus had gone to London on his usual weekly trip, and as usual George had met the six o’clock train. No George Augustus. He met the seven-ten, the eighty-fifty, and the eleven-five, the last train: and still no George Augustus. No telegram, no message. A feeling of impending calamity hung over the house that night, and there was not much sleep for Isabel and George. Next morning a long rambling letter, emotional and vague, arrived from George Augustus. The gist was that he was ruined, and in flight from his creditors. It was a bitter enough pill for George, bitterer still for Isabel. She had schemed and boosted George Augustus for years, she thought they were well off and getting better off. And she had taken pride in it as her own work. She had George Augustus so much under her thumb that whatever he did was through her influence. But the very perfection of her system was its ruin. He was so afraid of her that he dared not confess when a speculation went wrong. To keep up the standard of expense, he began to mortgage; to redeem the situation he plunged deeper into speculation and neglected his practice. Rumours began to get about. Then suddenly he was taken with panic, and fled. Later investigation showed that his affairs were not so compromised as he had imagined; but the sudden mad flight ruined everything. In a day the Winterbournes dropped from comparative affluence to comparative poverty. The effect on George was really rather disastrous. After the almost sordid distress of his early adolescence, he had succeeded in saving the spark, and had built up a life for himself, had created a positive happiness. But all that rested, in fact, on the family money. The distrust of himself and others which had gradually disappeared, the sense of suspicion and frustration, came flooding back with renewed bitterness. And the whole calamity was aggravated by circumstances of peculiar and unnecessary suffering, which made distrust and bitterness not unjustifiable. Demented apparently by that madness which afflicts those whom the gods wish to destroy, George Augustus had “had a little talk” on the subject of a career with the boy not three months before, when he must have known he was hopelessly involved. “Now, Georgie, you have only a few months longer, and you will be leaving school. You must think of a career in life. Have you thought about it?” “Yes, father.” “That’s right. And what career do you want to take up?” “I want to be a painter.” “I rather expected you’d say that. But you must remember that you can hardly expect to make money by painting. Even if you have the talent, which I’m sure you have, it takes many years to establish a reputation, and still more years before you can hope to make an adequate income.”