“Child, child!” he exclaimed, fretfully, “you don’t know what you’re talking of. Do you think it is such an easy thing to pass from one of the first positions in the City to a clerkship and a cottage in the suburbs? Do you think there is nothing _between_ such opposite conditions? Do you suppose I have only to shut up my books, and wish my creditors good morning, before I walk out of my office! You talk and think like a child, Maude. It is all very well for an old twaddler like John Gordon, who suspends payment upon the first failure that affects his stability, and who winds up his affairs with a dividend of fifteen shillings in the pound, and the compliments and sympathy of all Basinghall Street. No one will sympathize with _my_ fall, though more than I can count will suffer with me. I am not a man to drop under the first blow, Maude; for nearly three years I have been working a rotten ship, with the knowledge that nothing short of a miracle could save me from wreck. The wreck has come. The world will call me a dishonest man, because I waited for that miracle. I waited as the gambler waits at the green table, hoping that the last risk would bring me salvation. With me ruin means disgrace. I tell you, Maude, before the month is out, there will be a panic in the City, and men will cry out that Lionel Hillary is a rogue and a swindler. There’s not a man who ever dined at Twickenham that won’t use his knowledge of my home as a weapon against me. There’s not a bottle of wine I ever gave a friend whose price and quality will not be made a reproach against me. Oh! I know how people talk about these things. Go away, child! Your presence only goads and irritates me. It reminds me that I might have done better than I have done; I might have been wiser, I might have saved something--my good name at least. I have loved you so dearly, Maude,--Heaven only knows how dearly, for I am no man of big words or sentimental phrases. And now I leave you utterly destitute, the pauper child of a disgraced father.” “But you shall not leave me,” cried Maude, with a sudden energy that startled Lionel Hillary. “Papa, why do you insist upon treating me as a child? Why do you judge me by what I have been, rather than by what I can be? Why won’t you trust me? why won’t you talk to me as if I were a son, and had a right to share your secrets? You have told me the worst, and you see I can bear to know it. I can endure even disgrace; but I cannot bear to lose you. Trust me, papa. I will be patient under any calamity except----” She was seized with a sudden shivering, and clung to him with a convulsive force in the small hands that entwined themselves about his arm. “You know what I mean, papa,” she said. “Believe that I can bear anything if you will be true and brave and patient. And even yet the miracle may come. Something may happen at the very last, surely it may, to save your good name.”