Leonard pricked up his ears at this information. If Howard Stormont was on some big enterprise, it would be of a nefarious kind. “He didn’t disclose the nature of this great _coup_, of course?” he asked. The banker shook his head. “He didn’t give me the slightest hint. But, as I said, I attach very little importance to it. All these speculators are sanguine creatures, and follow wills-o’-the-wisp with a blind devotion worthy of a better cause. They have always got some grand scheme on which is to make them rich beyond the dreams of avarice.” Lydon was much impressed by that conversation with Jasper Stormont. Like himself, at an earlier stage, he had sensed a certain mystery surrounding his brother. He wondered whether bankruptcy and poverty would be the only doom that might fall upon the owner of Effington Hall? He thought he might escape that, in spite of the banker’s gloomy predictions. After all, he had kept up opulent state for a great many years. According to Gloria’s statement, he had been wealthy ever since she had taken up her residence with them. He was a cunning and resourceful man; although he lacked the solid qualities of his brother, probably he would never come quite down to the ground. But the young man was not sure a darker doom might not descend upon him in spite of his cleverness. He wondered if his sweetheart had told her father of the visit of that shabby Colonial, and the scene in the billiard-room when the drunken creature had been on the point of blurting out something, and had been stopped by his host, who was in a perfect agony of apprehension. He asked her the next day, and she assured him she had kept silence. “I have really let out more about Uncle Howard than I ought,” she explained, in a contrite voice. “But dad has a very persuasive way with him; he would have made a splendid cross-examiner. I expect his business has developed his faculties in that direction; he says that people wanting favours come to him with all sorts of ingenious lies. He leads you on in a quiet, suave sort of way to all kinds of admissions. And you know I haven’t the gift of reticence, I am far too outspoken. I could see that uncle was terribly upset by that visit. I have noticed a great change in him since. He gives me the impression of a man who has received a great shock, and can’t recover from it.” Lydon had himself noticed a certain change in the man. He was less bluff and genial than he used to be, and at times he caught a brooding expression, an air of abstraction, as if he were thinking deeply over something. At first he imagined Howard was nerving himself to make a confession to his brother, similar to the one he had made to himself, that he was living up to his income and that Gloria could expect very little from him when he died. But on thinking more over it he came to the conclusion that his sweetheart was right, that the change in his demeanour was due to the visit of Tom Newcombe, his “old pal.”