After pacing the room a few moments, with frequent commiserating glances at the face of the other, whose distress evidently deeply moved him, Arthur Elwood stopped short before her, and said: “Sister Alice, my time is about up,--I must go.” “Have you no word to leave for my husband when he comes?” asked Mrs. Elwood, with an effort to appear composed. “No,--none whatever to _him_; but with you, Alice,” he added, drawing out a small package of bank notes and dropping them into her lap, “with you, and for you alone, against a day of necessity, I leave that trifle--no hesitation--keep it--put it out of sight--there, that is right. Now only one thing more,--what of your son?” “Claud?” “Yes. You know it has happened that I have never seen him.” “I do know it, and have much regretted his absence; for I wished you to see him. But I am now looking for him every hour, and if you could delay----” “No, no, I must go. Tell him to forget, at once, that he was ever a rich man’s only son and heir, and learn to profit by a rich man’s errors; for, till he does this, which, if he is like others, will require some time, he will make no real advance in life.” “Your impression may be natural, but it hardly does him justice. He is _not_ like most others. Claud is a man now.” “So much the better, then, for you and himself. But you see with a mother’s eyes, probably, and speak with a mother’s heart. I will inquire about him, however, as indeed I will about you all. Good-by.” Thus did the unimpassioned Arthur Elwood, with a seeming business-like roughness and want of feeling, assume to hide the emotions which he really felt in the discovery of his brother’s ruin, and in witnessing the distress he had just caused in communicating it, hurry through the painful interview, and abruptly depart, leaving Mrs. Elwood to struggle in secret with the chaos of thoughts and emotions which Arthur’s unexpected revelation had brought over her. She was not left long, however, to struggle with her feelings alone. In a short time the sound of a familiar footstep hastily entering the front hall of the magnificent mansion,--alas! now no longer her own,--suddenly caught her ear; when, with the exclamation, “Claud, O Claud!” she rushed forward to her advancing son, and, to use the expressive language of Scripture, “fell on his neck and wept.” “I heard of father’s failure,” said the son, a fine looking youth of about twenty, with his mother’s cleanly cut features and firm, thoughtful countenance, joined to his father’s manly proportions. “I learned, as I came into the city, an hour ago, that father had just failed, his store been shut up, and all his property put into the hands of his creditors; and I hurried home to break the news to you. But I see you know it all.”