One day, feeling very contented and in good spirits, she had gone to see her father with an impulse to tell him how well she was getting on. Directly the door was opened by the untidy servant Dulcie felt that something had happened, that some blow had fallen. Everything looked different. She found her father in his den surrounded by papers, his appearance and manner so altered that the first thing she said was: 'Oh, papa! what's the matter?' Her father looked up. At his expression she flew to him and threw her arms round him. Then, of course, he broke down. Strange that with all women and most men it is only genuine sympathy that makes them give way. With a cool man of the world, or with a hard, cold, heartless daughter who had reproached him, Mr Clay would have been as casual as an undergraduate. At her sweetness he lost his self-control, and then he told her everything. * * * * * It was a short, commonplace, second-rate story, quite trivial and middle-class, and _how_ tragic! He had gambled, played cards, lost, then fallen back on the resource of the ill-judged and independent-minded--gone to the professional lenders. Mr Clay was not the sort of man who would ever become a sponge, a nuisance to friends. He was far too proud, and though he had often helped other people, he had never yet asked for help. In a word, the poor little house was practically in ruins, or rather, as he explained frankly enough (giving all details), unless he could get eighty pounds by the next morning his furniture would be sold and he and his wife would be turned out. Mr Clay had a great horror of a smash. He was imprudent, even reckless, but had the sense of honour that would cause him to suffer acutely, as Dulcie knew. Of course she offered to help; surely since she had three hundred a year of her own she could do something, and he had about the same....The father explained that he had already sold his income in advance. And her own legacy had been left so that she was barred from anticipation. Dulcie, who was practical enough, saw that her own tiny income was absolutely all that the three would have to live on until her father got something else, and that bankruptcy was inevitable unless she could get him eighty pounds in a day. 'It's so little,' he said pathetically, 'and just to think that if Blue Boy hadn't been scratched I should have been bound to--Well, well, I know. I'm not going to bet any more.' She made him promise to buck up, she would consult her friends.... Lady Conroy would perhaps be angelic and advance her her salary. (Of course she loathed the idea when she had been there only a week of being a nuisance and--But she must try.) It was worth anything to see her father brighten up. He told her to go and see her stepmother.