"What is it, Selwyn? There is nothing you cannot tell me." I leaned forward, my hands twisting in my lap. I knew more of Harrie than Selwyn knew I knew, but because he was the one person I did know with whom I had no measure of patience, I rarely mentioned his name. Harrie is Selwyn's weakness, and to his faults and failings the latter is, outwardly, at least, most inexplicably blind. He is as handsome as he is unprincipled and irresponsible, and his power to fascinate is seemingly limited only by his desire to exercise it. "What is it?" I repeated. "What has he been doing?" "Everything he shouldn't." Selwyn leaned forward and looked in the fire. "I was wrong, I suppose, but something had to be done. For some time he's been drinking and gambling, and I told him it had to stop. I stood it as long as I could, but when I found he would frequently come home too drunk to get in bed, and would have to be put there by Wingfield, who would be listening for him, I had a talk with him which it isn't pleasant to remember. I'd had a good many before. God knows I've tried--" Selwyn got up, went over to the window and stood for a moment at it with his back to me. Presently he left it and began to walk up and down the room, hands in his pockets. "I've doubtless made a mess of looking after him, but I did the best I knew how. Because of the eleven years' difference in our ages I've shut my eyes to much I should have seen, and refused to hear what I should have listened to, perhaps, but I was afraid of being too severe, too lacking in sympathy with his youth, with the differences in our natures, and, chiefly, because I knew he was largely the product of his rearing. He was only fourteen when father died, and to the day of her death mother allowed no one to correct him. She indulged him beyond sense or reason; let him grow up with the idea that whatever he wanted he could have. Restraint and discipline were never taught him. As for direction, guidance, training--" Selwyn's shoulders shrugged. "If I said anything to mother, cautioned her of the mistake she was making, she thought me hard and cruel, and ended by weeping. After her death it was too late." "Doesn't he work? Does he do nothing at all?" "Work!" Selwyn stopped. "He's never done a day's work in his life that earned what he got for it. When he refused to go back to college mother bought him a place in Hoge and Howell's office. They kept him until he'd used up the capital put in the business, then got rid of him. I offered to put more in, but they wouldn't agree. Later, I got John Moore to take him in, but John now refuses to renew their contract. He's absolutely no good. That's a pretty hard thing to say about one's brother, but it's true. He's the only thing on earth belonging to me that I've got to love, and now--"