It was long ere Wilford became aware of his misfortunes. Accustomed to rely implicitly on his uncle’s judgment, he reposed in indolent security until the tidings of the old man’s bankruptcy and his own consequent ruin came upon him like a thunderbolt. He had been too long the child of prosperity to bear reverses with fortitude. He had no profession, no knowledge of business, nothing by which he could obtain a future livelihood; and now, when habits of luxury had enervated both mind and body, he found himself utterly beggared. He brooded over his losses in moody bitterness of spirit long before the world became acquainted with his situation. He even concealed them from his wife, from that mistaken and cruel kindness which thinks to lighten the blow by keeping it long suspended. “How can I overwhelm her with sorrow and mortification by telling her we are beggars?” he cried, in anguish. “How can I bid her descend from the lofty eminence of wealth and fashion and retire to obscurity and seclusion? How can I be sure that she will bear the tidings with a patient spirit? I have sown within her young heart the seeds of vanity, and how can I hope to eradicate now the evils which have sprang from them? Her own little fortune is all that is now left, and how we are to live on that I cannot tell. Rachel cannot bear it—I know she cannot!” His thoughts added new anguish to his regrets, and months of harrowing dread and anxiety passed away before Wilford could summon courage to face manfully his increasing misfortunes. Mrs. Wilford had long intended to celebrate her husband’s birth-day by a brilliant party, and, quite unconscious of the storm which impended over her, she issued her cards nearly a month previous to the appointed evening. Harry Wilford knew that the party ought not to be given; he knew that it would bring discredit upon him, and perhaps censure upon his wife, for he was conscious that his affairs were rapidly approaching a fatal crisis; but he had not courage to own the truth. He watched the preparations for the party with a boding spirit; he looked sadly and fondly upon the brilliant attire of his young wife as she glided about the gorgeous apartments, and he felt that he was taking his last glance at happiness and comfort. The very next day his principal creditor, a fat, oily-faced, well-fed individual, remarkable for the regularity of his attendance, and the loudness of his responses at church—a man whose piety was carried to such lengths that in the fear lest his left hand should know the good which his right hand did, he was particularly careful never to do _any_—a man who would sit first at a feast and store up the careless sayings of convivial frankness to serve his own interest in the mart and the market-place—this man, after pledging him in the wine-cup and parting from him with the cordial grasp of friendship, met him with a legal demand for that which he knew would ruin him.