The crash at last came on the firm of O'Donnell. The business was sold; but the creditors would not be as severe on the old man as he would be on himself. They refused to leave him absolutely penniless; and when the whole affair was wound up he found he had a sum of money which, if carefully invested, would secure the declining years of his wife and himself against absolute want. Eugene was offered the managership of the old business, but would not take it, saying, with words of gratitude for the offer, that he would rather seek his fortune in another field, and that Rathclare would always in his mind be haunted by the ghost of their more prosperous years. He told his personal friends that while he was abroad on his honeymoon he had had his voice tried, and competent judges told him that, with study, he could make a living by it. He had always a desire to go on the stage. He was not too old to begin now. He intended selling up all his immediate personal belongings, and on the proceeds of the sale he calculated that he and his wife could, with great thrift, manage to live until he was able to earn money by singing. Three months after the last call, James O'Donnell and his wife had given up their large house in Rathclare, and taken a modest cottage in Glengowra, where they purposed passing the remainder of their days, and Eugene O'Donnell and his wife were settled in lodgings in London. By this time, all that had hitherto been concealed by Lavirotte was revealed. He had anticipated Cassidy's story by himself telling Dora of the infatuation he had once experienced for Nellie Creagh; and having explained to her that this condition of mind or heart had immediately preceded the onslaught he made on O'Donnell, she adopted his view, namely, that the whole thing was the outcome of an abnormal mental condition likely to arise once in the lifetime of the average man. He explained to her that upon certain occasions the sanest and greatest of men had behaved like idiots or poltroons, and that the very desperation of his circumstances at the time had left him to drift into a flirtation, which had never gone beyond a dozen civil words on one particular occasion. She believed all he said; and once she got over the first shock of the affair, banished it for ever from her mind, as though it had no longer any more existence than the moonlight of last month. Lavirotte and O'Donnell were now as inseparable as ever. They attended the same lessons together, and Dora waited for Lavirotte with Nellie at Eugene's lodgings, where the two unmarried lovers now met, when they met indoors. Lavirotte had still some of the money Lionel Crawford gave him, and when the affairs of the dead man were investigated it was found that he had some money left. This naturally became Dora's.