Shortly after his son’s return Simeon Barclay died in the South Park house. When it came to settling up the estate it was found that he had left much less than had been expected. The house and the income of a prudently invested eighty thousand dollars was all the widow and son had to their credit when the outlying debts were paid. It was not a mean fortune for the place and the time, but both were querulous and felt themselves aggrieved by this sudden lightening of what had been for fifteen years a well-filled purse. Jerry, to whom a pecuniary stringency was one of the greatest of trials, attempted to relieve the situation by speculating in “feet on the lode” in Virginia City, and quickly lost the major part of his inheritance. Even then there was no need for worry, as the son had been taken into the business the father had built up, which still flourished. But Jerry showed none of the devotion to commercial life that had distinguished the elder man. In his hands the fortunes of Barclay and Son, Real Estate Brokers, rapidly declined. He neglected the office, as he did his home, his mother, his friends. A devotion, more urgently engrossing and intoxicating than business could ever be, had monopolized his thoughts, his interests and his time. He was twenty-four when he returned from Europe, handsome, warm-blooded, soft-tongued, a youth framed for the love of women. It speedily found him. He had not been home six months when his infatuation for the wife of William Newbury was common talk. She was three years his senior, mismated to a man nearly double her age, dry, hard, and precise. She was a woman of tragedy and passion, suffering in her downfall. She had at first struggled fiercely against it, sunk to her fall in anguish, and after it, known contending conflicts of flesh and spirit, when she had tried to break from its bondage and ever sunk again with bowed head and sickened heart. People had wondered to see the figure of Lupé Newbury bent in prayer before the altars of her church. In her girlhood she had not been noted for her piety. Waking at night, her husband often heard her soft padding footfall as she paced back and forth through the suite of rooms she occupied. He had never understood her, but he loved her in a sober, admiring way, showered money on her, believed in her implicitly. This fond and unquestioning belief was the salt that her conscience rubbed oftenest and most deeply into the wound.