Lady Fleetwood, with the "best intentions," began the process by assuring her young friend that she was very sorry indeed for the differences between her brother and Mr. Hayley--the whole family were very sorry, and had long hoped that it might be made up; but that her brother had always been very firm--Lady Fleetwood would not call it obstinate, though that was what she meant to imply; but she was a woman of soft words, who never used a harsh expression in her life. However, her consolations showed Henry Hayley that there was something in his situation which needed consolation, and he proceeded to ascertain from Lady Fleetwood what it was. In regard to keeping a secret, it was a thing which Lady Fleetwood did not often succeed in effecting, though she sometimes attempted it; and Henry soon learned that Mr. Scriven, having heard, or discovered, or suspected, that Mr. Hayley occasionally frequented a fashionable gambling-house, had about two months before insisted upon an immediate dissolution of partnership. The accounts were even then in course of settlement, Lady Fleetwood told him; and she added, that she was very sorry to hear Mr. Hayley was likely to be greatly embarrassed by this business, as some speculations on his own private account had proved unsuccessful. "She could not understand it," she said, "for she knew nothing of business; but she recollected quite well having heard her brother say, at the time of her father's death, that the eighth share of the business was worth more than thirty thousand pounds." Henry Hayley left her with a heart terribly depressed. He felt himself compelled to think, and think deeply, for the first time in life; and that very fact proved depressing. When we first learn that the flowers of the garden, which this world generally is to youth, are doomed to wither, by seeing the fair, frail things fade and fall, the heart feels faint with apprehension lest they should never bloom again, nor others rise up in their places. But the mind of the lad was a powerful one, disposed for thought and apt for action. "My father is ruined," he thought, "and perhaps his indulgence to me may have contributed to involve him. More than one-half of the _fellows_ at Eton were not allowed to spend nearly as much as I was, and none more." Then came the thought, "What can I do to help him?"