"All that happened ten years back, however," the elder man equably reminded his companion. "It was the old story of a boom and a collapse--and one misfortune--even one disaster--need not break a man's spirit. You might have come back." The eyes of the portly gentleman rested in a momentary glance on the bottle and glass, but that may have been chance. At least he did not mention them. "You think I might have come back, do you?" The voice of the Englishman had hardened. "I don't want to be nasty or say disagreeable things. You've been a staunch friend to me--even when Anne found herself growing bitter against me. Well, I don't blame her. Her people had been leaders always. She had the divine right to an assured place in society, and I had failed. I suppose it was natural enough for her to feel that she'd been done in--but it happened to be the finish of me. I'd sweated blood to make Middlesboro--and I didn't have the grit left to commence over." For the first time Colonel Wallifarro's attitude stiffened, bringing up his silver-crowned head defensively. "Anne didn't leave you for financial reasons, Larry," he asserted steadily. "She's my kinswoman, and you are my friend, but no purpose is to be served by my listening to _ex parte_ grievances from either of you." Masters shrugged his shoulders. "I dare say you're quite right," he admitted. "But be that as it may, she did leave me--left me flat. If she didn't divorce me, it wasn't out of consideration for my feelings. It would almost have been better if she had. All I ever succeeded in doing for her was to make her the poor member of a rich family--and that's not enviable by half. And yet if I'd been a sheer rotter, I could scarcely have fared worse." "If it wasn't consideration for you, at least it was for some one who should be important to you. As it is, your little girl isn't growing up under the shadow of a sensational divorce record." The pale blue eyes of the Englishman softened abruptly, and the lips under the short-clipped moustache changed from their stiffness to the curvature of something like a smile. Into his expression came a lurking, half-shy ghost of winsomeness. "Yes, yes," he muttered, "the kiddie. God bless her little heart!" After a moment, though, he drew back his shoulders with a jerk and spoke again in a harsher timbre. "Anne has been fair enough with me about the child, though I'm bound to say I've been jolly well made to understand that it was only a chivalrous and undeserved sort of generosity. Well, the kiddie's almost twelve now, and before long she'll be a belle, too--poor, but related to all the first families." Masters paused, and when he went on again it was still with the air of a repressed chafing of spirit.