He was only just in time to catch the train and was hurriedly searching for a place when he was startled to hear himself called by his Christian name, and glancing round he saw someone beckoning to him from a carriage at a little distance. The door was opened for him, he stepped in, and to his amazement recognised in the dim light the well-known features of his Godfather. There was no other occupant of the carriage and Ralph remembering how they had parted at Rilchester would fain have beat a retreat. “You are going to Southampton?” asked Sir Matthew. “I heard Macneillie’s company was there and I came partly for the sake of seeing you.” “Do you bring news of Evereld?” asked Ralph eagerly. “No,” said Sir Matthew, “she has succeeded in baffling me, you were right there. It is to her wilfulness that all my misfortunes are due.” Ralph bit his lip to keep back the retort that occurred to him. For a minute the two looked at each other searchingly. Sir Matthew felt a sinking of the heart as he noticed the angry light in his companion’s eyes. Ralph on the other hand was perplexed by the pallor and dejection of hiss Godfather’s face. The Company promoter seemed quite another man, he looked old and broken, all his suavity of manner, his business-like, capable air had vanished. “I am ruined,” he said; “worse than ruined--I am disgraced. At any moment I may be arrested unless I can succeed in leaving the country unnoticed.” Ralph listened to this startling announcement with an impassive face. He hardened his heart against the man who had dealt harshly with him. “I suppose it means,” he said, “that another of your Companies has failed and that this time you have suffered yourself, besides ruining hundreds as you ruined my father.” “God knows how I regretted his losses,” said Sir Matthew and for the time there was a ring of genuine feeling in his voice. “It was for that reason I adopted you, that I educated you, that I took you straight to my own home. Have you forgotten that?” “Sir, you never gave me a chance of forgetting it,” said Ralph bitterly, all his worst self called out by contact with this man whom he detested. “Had I listened to your temptation I should now have been pledged to become a money-grubbing priest, a trader in holy things, a disgrace to the church.” He pulled himself up, recollecting that he was not much to boast of as it was--but a faulty, irritable mortal, full now of resentment, and hatred and contemptuous anger. “Perhaps you were right,” said Sir Matthew with a sigh. “I admit that I was harsh with you that day, and you have a right to hit me now that I am down.” Ralph instantly responded to this appeal as the astute Sir Matthew had calculated. “Don’t let us speak of the past,” he said in an altered tone, “I owe you my education and I try to be grateful for that. Why did you wish to see me? What do you want with me?”