He married a veritable hot-house flower--his employer’s only daughter--a pretty, indolent, excitable, extravagant creature, with French blood in her veins, who carried him up a dozen rungs of the social ladder, and brought him a fortune. Her house--in Toorak--her splendid dresses, entertainments, and equipages were the talk and envy of her neighbours and sex; she was in with the Government House set, and she lived in an incessant round of gaiety, a truly brilliant butterfly. After six years of married life, she died of consumption; and her widower was not inconsolable. He kept on the big house, he frequented his club, he heaped up riches, he gambled with selections as others do with cards; he was not behind-hand in the great land boom which led to that saturnalia of wild speculation which demoralized the entire community. Suburban lands were forced up to enormous prices--a thousand times their value; people bought properties in the morning and sold them in the afternoon at an advance of thousands of pounds. New suburbs, new banks, new tenements sprang up like mushrooms, under the influence of adventurous building societies, and every one was making an enormous fortune--on paper. When the gigantic bubble burst, the consequences were terrible, involving the ruin of thousands. Robert West had seen that the crash must come, but believed that _he_ would escape. He tempted fortune too rashly. Just a few more thousands, and he would sell out; but his greed was his bane. He had not time to stand from under when the whole card house toppled over and his fortunes fell.