Alfred grows more and more infatuated with racing; he meets with reverse after reverse, adopts system after system, discovers continually new methods of winning infallibly, is buoyed up and elated one day with the prospect of winning a great sum, and groans with despair the next day when the result is made known. Of course he does not always lose; he wins small sums occasionally, but they are like raindrops in the sea. Week after week passes, month after month flies by, and he is sinking lower and lower. David Sheldrake stands his friend still; still supplies him with money, and takes his signature for the amount, and what with letters and documents and information of how matters stand with Alfred at the office of his employers, Messrs. Tickle and Flint, holds such a dangerous power over the infatuated young man as can crush him at any moment. Here a defence must be set up for David Sheldrake, otherwise he might be taken for a fool for parting with his money so freely to a young fellow for whom he cared no more than for the snuff of a candle. David Sheldrake knew every trick of the game he was playing. Madly infatuated as he was with Lily, he was too completely a man of the world to throw away the sums of money he advanced to Alfred from time to time. But the fact of it was, he got it all back; what he gave with one hand he received with the other. He made an express stipulation with Alfred that Con Staveley should be the medium of all the young fellow's racing speculations; so that no sooner did David Sheldrake lend, than Con Staveley swallowed. Therefore, although in the aggregate, Alfred owed David Sheldrake a large sum of money, the astute David was really very little out of pocket. He was aware that, in other ways, Alfred was more extravagant than his earnings at Messrs. Tickle and Flint's warranted; but where he got the money from to supply these extravagances was no business of David Sheldrake's. Alfred did not get it from _him_. But in Alfred's moments of remorse, when he was pouring into David Sheldrake's ears accounts of his misfortunes, of how he was trapped by this tipster or deceived by that prophet, or swindled in some other way, many a chance expression of terror escaped from him, of which David Sheldrake made good use in his reflections--putting this and that together until he had arrived at the truth, and knew for a certainty that Alfred was robbing his employers. The power which this knowledge gave him over Lily was so complete that he would not have parted with it upon easy terms. He never failed of impressing upon Alfred that what he did for him he did for Lily's sake, and for Lily's sake only. "If it were not for her, my boy," he said, "I think I should close on you; for after all, business is business." Alfred listened, white and trembling.