“I beg your pardon, Mr. Schwartzbrod, but you are quite mistaken in what you say. The cause of your misfortune goes farther back than any action of mine. The beginning was on the day when you resolved to crush the Mackellers. They had helped you, father and son. They were innocent men, and honest. Each in his own way had assisted you to the possibility of almost unlimited wealth. That did not satisfy you. You determined to take from them their just compensation, and to fling them, paupers, into the gutter. It happened through one of those freaks of fate which keeps alive our faith in eternal justice, that the day you came to this resolve you were a doomed man.” “That’s what you called me here to tell me, is it, you human poodle dog, you contemptible puppy, rich through the thefts of your ancestors.” “Your language, Mr. Schwartzbrod, seems to have become tinged with the intemperance of the panic. I did not intend to refer to the past at all. You set the subject of our conversation the moment you entered the room, and I merely followed your lead, and strove to remove a misapprehension from your mind as to the original causes of things. No, my invitation to this house had quite another object. I shall not strain your credulity by asking you to believe that when I heard four days ago you were bankrupt, a feeling of slight regret was uppermost in my mind. I don’t like to see people suffer.” The old man laughed, like the grating of a file on a saw. “Of course I don’t ask you to believe that, and should be sorry to put such a strain on whatever belief in human nature you may possess, so don’t trouble any further about my statements, which you doubtless regard as absurd. Have you got any money left?” “Not a stiver.” “How about your six colleagues; are they cleaned out?” “Even if they had money, they would not intrust a penny of it to me. You talk about my belief in human nature. Well, the faith in human nature in me is gone. I have done my best for them, and lost every point in the game, together with their money and my own.” “Very well, Mr. Schwartzbrod, we must rehabilitate you. I possess what I think is the finest red automobile in London, and my chauffeur would add dignity to the equipage of an emperor. I will lend you chauffeur and car for the day, and if you drive through the streets round the bank for a few hours, those who turn up their noses at you will be lifting their hats instead.” “I suppose you think that’s funny, Lord Stranleigh. You wish to exhibit me in your motor car after the fashion of the Romans parading their captives in their chariots when defeated. I don’t know why I came here, but I warn you I did not come to be insulted.”