His father began, with an exclamation, to speak, but recalled to himself by another low but emphatic call from his wife, “James, James!” restrained himself. He gave Archie, however, a look, under which the unfortunate young man fell back, feeling as if something had struck him to his heart. Oh, the contempt in it, the indignation, as of something unworthy a word! and to know that he did not deserve it, and yet have his lips sealed and nothing to say for himself. It was almost harder to bear than any fury of reproach. Archie felt himself shamed in the way in which shame was most bitter, and in the presence of those who made his disgrace most terrible to bear--the girl whom he admired with a kind of adoration, and the woman whom he hated without knowing why. As he stood there, drawn back a step, lowering, gloomy, his eyes sunk in their sockets, he looked the picture of conscious meanness, and almost guilt. And such he appeared to his father, whose passion of disappointment and rage of offended affection was scarcely to be restrained. Rowland got up from his seat abruptly and went into the library, which was the room he used. He came back in a minute or two, holding a cheque in his hand, which he tossed at his son, as he had once tossed the twenty-pound note. “Send that,” he said, “to your aunt for your friend.” He walked back towards his place, then turned again, and adding, “By to-day’s post,” sat down with his face towards the fire. Archie stood for a moment with the cheque lying at his feet. All the old rebellion rose within his heart. It was more bitter this time than the last. Should he leave it there lying, the wretched money, and turn his back upon his father, who even when he was kind was so in scorn, and flung the help for the friend, whom he believed Archie had refused to help, as he would have flung a bone to a dog. Should he go and leave it, and turn his back upon this house for ever? There was a moment’s struggle, very bitter and sore, in Archie’s breast: and then he remembered Colin, the pale-faced lad, whose illness, it had been no great surprise, but so overwhelming a blow to hear of, just at the moment when he had made himself incapable of helping him. Then he stooped down, and picking up the paper went to the writing-table and wrote a hasty letter, stooping over the blotting-book as he stood. “Aunt Jane,” he wrote, “you have done me a very ill turn, but I do not blame you: and my father will perhaps end by driving me desperate; and most likely you will none of you ever know the reason. But here’s the money for Colin Lamont, though it’s been flung at my head, like the time before, and though I have not even you to take my part now. Anyhow it will be good for him. His is a better case, however ill he is, than mine.--A. ROWLAND.”