There were not wanting, in the very middle of their abundant prosperity, signs and tokens sufficient to have assured the Mortomleys that to the life, one at least of them was leading, there must come an end; but neither husband nor wife had eyes to see presages which were patent to the very ordinary minds of some of the business men with whom the owner of Homewood had dealings. Notwithstanding his large connexion, his monopoly of several lucrative branches of his trade, his own patrimony, his wife's thousands, Mortomley was always short of money. When once shortness of money becomes chronic, it is quite certain the patient is suffering under a mortal disease. People who are clever in commercial matters understand this fact thoroughly. Chronic shortness of money has no more to do with unexpected reverses, with solvent poverty, with any ailment curable by any means short of sharp and agonizing treatment, than the heart throbs of a man destined some day to fall down stone dead in the middle of a sentence, has a likeness to the pulsations of fever, or the languid flow of life which betokens that the body is temporarily exhausted. Like all persons, however, who are sickening unto death, Mortomley was the last to realize the fact. He knew he was embarrassed, he knew why he was embarrassed, and he thought he should have no difficulty in clearing himself of those embarrassments. And, in truth, had he been a wise man he might have done so. If, after the death of his brother, which occurred about seven years subsequent to his own marriage with Dolly, he had faced his position, there would have been no story to tell about him or his estate either; but instead of doing that, he drifted--there are hundreds and thousands in business, in love, on sea or land, who when an emergency comes, always drift--and always make ship-wreck of their fortunes and their lives in consequence. For years he had helped his step-brother by going security for him, by lending his name, by giving him money, by paying his debts. Somehow the security had never involved pecuniary outlay. The loan of the name had been renewed, passed into different channels, held over, manipulated in fact by Mr. Richard Halling, until, in very truth, Mortomley, at best as wretched a financier as he was an admirable inventor, knew no more than his own daughter how accounts stood between him and the man who had been his mother's favourite son. One day, however, Mr. Richard Halling caught cold--a fortnight after, he was dead. The debts he left behind him were considerable; his effects small. To Mortomley he bequeathed the former, together with his son and daughter. Of his effects the creditors took possession. The event cut up Mr. Mortomley considerably. He was a man who, making no fresh friends, felt the loss of relatives morbidly.