After this John felt no more reluctant at parting with eighty-one pounds six and eightpence than he would have felt in paying a specialist two guineas for advising him to take a long rest when he wanted to take a long rest. His friend's aloofness from money had raised to a higher level what might easily have been a most unpleasant transaction: not even one of his heroes could have extricated himself from an involved situation more poetically and more sympathetically. It now only remained to dispose of the villain. "Shall we have Hugh in?" John asked. "I wish I could keep him with me," the architect sighed. "But I don't think I have a right to consult my personal feelings. We must consider his behavior in itself." "In any case," said John, quickly, "I have made arrangements about his future; he is going to be a mahogany-planter in British Honduras." "Of course I don't use mahogany much in my work, but if ever ..." the architect was beginning, when John waved aside his kindly intentions. "The impulse is generous, Stephen, but I should prefer that so far as you are concerned Hugh should always be as if he had never been. In fact, I'm bound to say frankly that I'm glad you do not use mahogany in your work. I'm glad that I've chosen a career for Hugh which will cut him completely off from what to me will always be the painful associations of architecture." While they were waiting for the sinner to come in, John tried to remember the name of the mahogany-planter whom he had met in the _Murmania_; but he could get no nearer to it than a vague notion that it might have been Raikes, and he decided to leave out for the present any allusion to British Honduras. Hugh entered his chief's room without a blush: he could not have bowed his head, however sincere his repentance, because his collars would not permit the least abasement; though at least, his brother thought, he might have had the decency not to sit down until he was invited, and when he did sit down not to pull up his trousers in that aggressive way and expose those very defiant socks. Stephen Crutchley rose from his throne and shambled over to the fireplace, leaning against the stone hood of which he took up an attitude that would have abashed anybody but Hugh. "Touchwood," he began, "no doubt you have already guessed why I have asked you to speak to me." Hugh nodded encouragingly. "I do not wish to enlarge upon the circumstances of your behavior, because your brother, my old friend, has come forward to shield you from the consequences. Nor do I propose to animadvert upon the forgery itself. However lightly you embarked upon it, I don't doubt that by now you have sufficiently realized its gravity. What tempted you to commit this crime I do not hope to guess; but I fear that such a device for obtaining money must have been inspired by debts, whether for cards or for horse-racing, or perhaps even for women I do not pretend to know."