Meanwhile John's position became desperate, though he himself did not believe it to be so utterly hopeless as it really was. Since this is the story of Marion Darche and not of her husband, it is unnecessary to enter into the financial details of the latter's ruin. It is enough to say that for personal ends he had made use of the Company's funds in order to get into his own control a line of railroad by which a large part of the Company's produce was transported, with the intention of subsequently forcing the Company to buy the road of him on his own terms, as soon as he should have disposed by stealth of his interest in the manufacture. Had the scheme succeeded he should have realised a great fortune by the transaction, and it is doubtful whether anything could have been proved against him after the event. Unfortunately for him, he had come into collision with a powerful syndicate of which he had not suspected the existence until he had gone so far that either to go on or to retire must be almost certain ruin and exposure. The existence of this syndicate had dawned upon him on the day described in the preceding chapters, and the state of mind in which he found himself was amply accounted for by the discovery he had made. As time went on during the following weeks, and he became more and more hopelessly involved, his appearance and his manner changed for the worse. He grew haggard and thin, and his short speeches to his wife lacked even that poor element of wit which is brutality's last hold upon good manners. With his father, however, he maintained his usual behaviour, by a desperate effort. He could not afford to allow the whole fabric of the old gentleman's illusions about him to perish, so long as Simon Darche's hand and name could still be useful. It is but just to admit, too, that he felt a sort of cynical, pitying attachment to his father--the affection which a spoiled child bestows upon an over-indulgent parent, which is strongly tinged with the vanity excited by a long course of unstinted and indiscriminating praise.