There had been no positive evil in his life. A young man's follies perhaps, but few vices, if any, thank God! He would never be a libertine, a drunkard, a gambler, a thief. But was negative goodness all? These twenty-four years spent in shaping and culturing, but to what end? Could he call him back from his pleasure now, and have him take up this struggle grown too heavy to fight single-handed? and would he be manful, brave, clear-sighted, and unrepining? No. He felt the change would be too great. The soul so used to ease and luxury, fine linen and soft couches, delicate appetites, indolent habits, intellectual pursuits and graces, to be put in rough harness of business at once, would be cruel, nay, worse, like chaining humming-birds to a dray-wagon. And Irene, flitting like a butterfly through elegant _salons_, how would she be content with poverty and a cottage? And was this all the work of his own hands? Had he laid up no treasure against the time of adversity, made no homes into which he might be received in his trial hour? For two years he had struggled manfully, earnestly; and all this time at his very gate there had been a traitor, turning aside the stream until there was nothing but a barren desert left. The crown of his life was poverty and ruin! For himself he could give up luxuries, and come to plain fare; but what of the others? This last news had swept away all hope. He sought Horace Eastman, and confronted him with his deceit and wrong: somehow he could not bring himself to call it by its true name, crime, and fasten it on the man there and then. There was a high-bred delicacy about David Lawrence, a little of the old knightly chivalry that in past times held a man back from striking a fallen foe. And then he was not quite sure. The dishonorable work lay between the two men, and he forbore to blame this one wrongly.