The veins in his forehead swelled a little, yet he neither flinched nor reddened. "I suppose," he answered, his voice a little less clear and distinct, "you allude to my engagement to Miss Lenox. It was broken off when these troubles came. We were to have been married a year ago in June, but I was not quite free to take her travelling, and it seemed her wish to wait. The wedding-day was quite fixed for a fortnight after the date of my poor father's sickness. Of course I offered her her freedom at once when I realized my scanty prospects of ensuring her a luxurious future. Naturally, everything was broken off. I am hampered by circumstances. I shall never feel myself free to live even in ordinary comfort until my father's debts are paid to the last penny. My first duty is to my father and mother. My sisters are all married, have large families, and, above all, have lost the home feeling. We three are alone in the world in our reverses. When you see our home, Floyd, you won't wonder that I could not ask Georgy to come to it." "But would she have come, Jack?" I stammered. "Was she faithful to you? would she not wait for you?" "Georgy is not romantic," he said kindly, "and has not been brought up in a school which inspires the tenderest feelings. I should never have expected that sort of devotion from her, nor am I one to inspire it. I knew at once when the dark days came that everything was over. Blow after blow had struck me: just at that time that she should desert me was but one blow the more." I threw my arm about him in the old way, but he did not turn now and smile into my face as when we were boys. This gloom was not so easily dispelled.