“Penniless—impossible!” I exclaimed. “I thought Mr. Hugh Lincoln was admitted to be immensely wealthy.” “His immense wealth,” said my father, “proves to be a magnificent dream—a shining bubble. He must have been lamentably ignorant of his own affairs, for things have evidently been going wrong for some months past. Such wild, mad-cap speculations as the house have engaged in, I am sure my sensible, prudent friend would never have countenanced.” I now understood the allusions of the old gentleman, in the first conversation which I had overheard in the ball-room, the night of Mr. Lincoln’s fearful death, and I repeated them to my father. “Yes, indeed,” he replied, “daring indeed have been their operations, and not only that, but reckless and wild in the extreme. I remember now, although I gave but little heed at the time, noticing in Hugh Lincoln, for some months past, a heavy, growing indolence, as I deemed it. It must have proceeded from his fatal disease, and he has left the affairs of the concern in the hands of the junior partners, who have mismanaged not only wildly but wickedly. Poor fellow! he has been spared the sorrow, but what is to become of the poor invalid widow and orphans? Six little helpless creatures beside Agnes—Adel is not more than fourteen?” “Scarcely thirteen,” I replied. “Poor creatures!” exclaimed my father, brushing a tear aside. “But we must do all that we can for them. I am a poor man, but what little I have shall be freely shared with Hugh Lincoln’s children.” “You forget, my dear father,” I said, “that Agnes is engaged to Evart Berkely.” “True,” replied my father. “But, Enna, I have very little confidence in him; I only hope Agnes may not love him too dearly, for I very much fear that Evart’s love is rather too weak to bear the present news.” “Does he know of the insolvency of the firm?” I inquired. “Oh, yes,” said my father, “the mere suspicion of the insolvency of such a firm as Lincoln, Murray & Co., would of course spread like wild-fire. I never dreamed of such a thing myself, however, and heard this morning with great surprise, on going to my office, from an old merchant, that it had been rumored for several days. You must break it to Agnes, poor girl.” “You think Evart Berkely knows of it?” I said, after a long silence. “Oh, yes,” replied my father, “I met him in company with some other merchants this afternoon, and he spoke of Mr. Lincoln only as he would of any other well-known merchant, and united in self congratulations with some others as to being unaffected, fortunately, by the failure—not at all in the tone of one interested in his family.”