"My dear Rachel," it ran. "In all probability we shall not meet again for some time. I find myself utterly unable to remain to meet the blow which must inevitably fall before many days are over. The anxiety of the past year has made me a coward. I ask your forgiveness for what you may call my desertion of you. We have never relied upon each other much, and you at least are not included in my ruin. You will not be called upon to share my poverty. You had better return to Paris at once. With a faint hope that you will at least pity me, I remain, Your affectionate father, Gerard Ffrench." CHAPTER LII. "HAWORTH'S IS DONE WITH." Almost at the same moment, Haworth was reading, in his room at the Works, the letter which had been left for himself. "I have borne as much as I can bear," it ended. "My punishment for my folly is that I am a ruined man and a fugitive. My presence upon the scene, when the climax comes, would be of no benefit to either of us. Pardon me, if you can, for the wrong I have unintentionally done you. My ill-luck was sheerly the result of circumstances. Even yet, I cannot help thinking that there were great possibilities in my plans. But you will not believe this and I will say no more. In haste, Ffrench." When Rachel Ffrench finished reading her note she lighted a taper and held the paper to it until it was reduced to ashes, and afterward turned away merely a shade paler and colder than before. Haworth having finished the reading of Ffrench's letter, sat for a few seconds staring down at it as it lay before him on the table. Then he burst into a brutal laugh. After that, he sat stupefied--his elbows on the table, his head on his hands. He did not move for half an hour. The Works saw very little of him during the day. He remained alone in his room, not showing himself, and one of the head clerks, coming in from the Bank on business, went back mystified, and remarked in confidence to a companion that "things had a queer look." He did not leave the Works until late, and then went home. All through the evening his mother watched him in her old tender way. She tried to interest him with her history of the Briarley's bereavement and unexpected good fortune. She shed tears over her recital. "So old, my dear," she said. "Old enough to have outlived her own,--an' her ways a little hard," wiping her eyes. "I'd like to be grieved for more, Jem--though perhaps it's only nat'ral as it should be so. She hadn't no son to miss her as you'll miss me. _I_ shouldn't like to be the last, Jem." He had been listening mechanically and he started and turned to her. "The last?" he said. "Aye, it's a bit hard." It was as if she had suggested a new thought to him of which he could not rid himself at once. He kept looking at her, his eyes wandering over her frail little figure and innocent old face, restlessly.