To this and much more did Markham the younger lend a painful and reluctant attention; but he was too much distressed to trust his voice to interrupt the desultory talk of his afflicted father. It was indeed very afflictive to him that, at the very time when he was, by means of an honorable and diligent application to the duties of his profession, rising in the world both in wealth and reputation, there should come suddenly and unexpectedly upon him this drawback to his success; for he could not for a moment admit the idea of enjoying his prosperity while his father should be living under the unpleasant consciousness that his debts were but partially discharged. After a little more conversation, and when the first uneasiness of their painful meeting had been somewhat abated, the young man very earnestly, but respectfully, desired to be informed concerning the particulars of his father’s embarrassments, and the amount of the claims upon him. This inquiry, so humiliating to a parent and to a man of such feelings as the elder Markham, was managed by the young barrister with so exquisitely delicate address, that instead of grieving and irritating, it rather soothed and composed the father’s mind. There was also a happy and pleasing consciousness that there had been, on his own part, no impropriety or inaccuracy of conduct; the misfortune was simply and purely a misfortune, arising from events over which he had no control. Perhaps it would be rather too severe, and savour somewhat of moral pedantry, should we say that Mr. Markham the elder ought to have been sooner aware of his changing circumstances, and ought to have curtailed his expenses as his means diminished; and that he ought to have known very fully and very exactly all the probabilities and possibilities of mercantile fluctuation. But even supposing him to have had some little suspicion and some faint consciousness that all was not right, it would have been a piece of magnanimity seldom witnessed in the commercial world, had he resolutely and boldly abridged very essentially his usual expenditure; and perhaps that very abridgment would have been the means of hastening the dreaded calamity. Generally speaking, we may say that the calamity in which the elder Markham was involved was not from his own imprudence.