Madeline’s letters were always regular by every mail--always long, always sweet, full of tenderness and consolation and news, and all the comforting details which a woman’s letters, but seldom a man’s, supply. He did not really require any other correspondent so long as he had Madeline to set everything before him. But for two or three mails even her letters had failed. She had thought him on his way to England while he was still delayed in Jamaica; and though he had let them know by telegraph of his detention, he could not get the letters which had not been written. He started, therefore, at least three weeks behind the current news of home. Everything went well on the homeward voyage until after the steamer had made its last stop among the island ports, and had at last set out on the full Atlantic, with nothing between it and England save the wastes of the ocean. The passengers had all provided themselves with the latest papers--chief among them those just arrived by the mail-steamer from home--when they made this last call on their homeward-bound voyage. Gervase had his handful of papers like all the rest, and was reading them with devotion--the politics, the discussions, the literature, the books, amid which he hoped to be in a few days more. There were other portions of the news upon which, perhaps, he did not look with so much interest, or hurried over with a glance. “I say, Burton,” said a fellow-passenger, “is this any relation of yours?” looking up from the paper he was reading. “Eh? What is it?” Gervase asked, half-hearing. The passenger cast a hurried glance down the page and then said hastily---- “Oh, I beg your pardon! I see it can’t be;” and presently hurried away, carrying his paper with him. Gervase did not give much importance to this quickly stifled query; but when another gentleman on board whom he knew approached him a little later on, and asked, with an exceedingly grave face, when he had last heard from his father, a sudden alarm sprang up in his mind. “I have heard nothing for some weeks,” he said. “I have had to put off sailing for mail after mail before I could get my business done.” “Oh,” said the other, “then you have had no news?” “What is wrong with my father?” cried Gervase. “I see you know something. Is he ill?” “I hope not; I hope not indeed. But I know absolutely nothing,” his old friend said. These words made Gervase perfectly sure that something was known, something which he did not know; and it was then he remembered the careless exclamation of the other, “Can this be any relation of yours?” There must evidently be some record of trouble in the papers which nobody would venture to tell him. He hurried to the cabin and found a group there gathered round one who seemed expounding the matter to them. “I believe his son would not enter the office, so he was forced to take another partner--who seems to have brought him to ruin.” “Is it the languid young man who is here?” asked another.