“And to what, sir, am I indebted for the honour of a visit at this untimely hour?” inquired Sir Gilbert in his most freezing accents, as his coldly critical eyes took in his son from head to foot. Alec coloured for a moment and bit his lip, as if to keep down some rising emotion. Then, in a voice of studied calmness, he said, “Perhaps, sir, I may be permitted to take a seat; for, in point of fact, I am dead tired, and have much to say to you.” The baronet waved his son to a chair, and took another himself some distance away. “I am here to-night, father, to make a confession.” “I presumed as much the moment I set eyes on you.” “I am afraid you will term it a very disgraceful confession.” “I have not much doubt on that point,” responded the baronet grimly. “Disgrace and you seem to have gone hand in hand for a long time past.” “Folly, but not disgrace, father. At the worst——” The baronet held up his hand. “I am not used to such hair-splitting distinctions. You may call it by what term you like, to my way of thinking, it is nothing less than a disgrace when a young man permits himself to contract debts which he has no reasonable prospect—nay, which, in many cases, he has no intention of liquidating. But proceed, sir.” Apparently Alec found it no easy matter to proceed. The story he had to tell was, without doubt, a sufficiently discreditable one, and such as might well cause him to hesitate before he could summon up sufficient courage to enter on its recital. Put into the fewest possible words it came to this: he had lost heavily over a certain race, and had no means of meeting his liabilities. In three days’ time, unless his father would come to his help, he would be posted as a defaulter, which, for a man in his position, meant outlawry and social extinction. He got through his confession somehow, speaking in hard, dry tones, almost as if he were relating an incident which referred to some stranger and in which he had no personal concern. He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his fingers interlocked, and his eyes apparently intent on taking in the pattern of the carpet. A harsh rasping laugh broke from Sir Gilbert. “And are you really such an imbecile as to have come all the way to Withington, and on such a night as this, indulging yourself with the hope that I would as much as lift my little finger if by so doing I could avert the disgrace—the infamy—which you have wilfully accumulated on your worthless head? If you laid any such flattering unction to your soul, you can dismiss it at once. There is the window, sir; you can depart by the way you came.” Alec drew himself up, and for the first time looked his father straight in the face with the old clear, unwavering look, which the latter remembered so well in him as a boy.