"Oh! as for me," answered Mr. Forde, "I shall walk out of the concern whenever you go into liquidation. I have pledged myself so deeply concerning your solvency and respectability that I could not face my directors over your account. It is a fact, I could not. I must leave; and I am not a young and adaptable man, like your nephew there, able to play at football with fortune, and I am not like you, Mr. Mortomley, so fortunate as to have married a wife possessed of money. When I go all goes; when this salary ceases, I have not the faintest idea where to turn to procure another, and what is to become of my wife and children God alone knows. Poor little Alfie!" added Mr. Forde _sotto voce_, apostrophizing the latest pug-nosed, round-faced, vacant-eyed darling with which Mrs. Forde had as yet blessed the managerial mansion. That shot went straight home. Mortomley thought of his wife and his Lenore, and remained ashamedly silent. Mr. Forde perceiving his advantage pressed it. "You are the last man I should have considered capable of taking such a mean advantage." "Good heavens!" broke in Mortomley, "what would you have me do? Can I keep on a business with men in possession, with judgments out against me, with writs returnable next week and the week after. Mean advantage! I have borne what I think no other man living would have done, and I believe I have been a simple fool for my pains." At this juncture Rupert interposed. "If you allow Mr. Forde to persuade you to draw back now you will be a simple fool." "Keep silence, sir," said Mr. Forde facing round on this undesired prophet. "I shall not keep silence if I see fit to speak," retorted Rupert angrily. "You have spoken a great deal too often of late," was the reply. "Owing to your representations I have been induced to tell my directors that Mr. Deane intended to go into partnership with your uncle, and--" "Stop," interposed Rupert. "Let me contradict one _canard_ at a time. _I_ never said Mr. Deane would go into partnership with Mr. Mortomley, but you did, and I then told you Mr. Deane would do no such thing. You then suggested he might lend money to the concern. I told you he would not. Of course you will try to make your own story good, but mine is the true version of the affair." With a shrug--which Mr. Forde believed to be of a style a Frenchman might have envied--the manager turned once again to Mortomley. "We will waive that question for the present," he said. "I suppose you do not really want to go into the Gazette; you have no private reason for desiring to liquidate your affairs?" "No, indeed," was the answer. "And the act is, you tell me, not past recall?" "It is not," said Mortomley. Rupert clenched his hand and made a feint of thrusting his fist through a pane of glass as his relative spoke, but he refrained and said, "Gibbons knows all about it." "Ah! how does that happen?" asked Mr. Forde, rising and walking eagerly towards the window.