Anxiety about the future had never entered Tom’s mind. His father had always ridden a good horse, kept a good house, and had the cheerful, confident air of a man who has plenty of property to fall back upon. Tom had never dreamed that his father would “fail”; _that_ was a form of misfortune which he had always heard spoken of as a deep disgrace, and disgrace was an idea that he could not associate with any of his relations, least of all with his father. A proud sense of family respectability was part of the very air Tom had been born and brought up in. He knew there were people in St Ogg’s who made a show without money to support it, and he had always heard such people spoken of by his own friends with contempt and reprobation. He had a strong belief, which was a lifelong habit, and required no definite evidence to rest on, that his father could spend a great deal of money if he chose; and since his education at Mr Stelling’s had given him a more expensive view of life, he had often thought that when he got older he would make a figure in the world, with his horse and dogs and saddle, and other accoutrements of a fine young man, and show himself equal to any of his contemporaries at St Ogg’s, who might consider themselves a grade above him in society because their fathers were professional men, or had large oil-mills. As to the prognostics and headshaking of his aunts and uncles, they had never produced the least effect on him, except to make him think that aunts and uncles were disagreeable society; he had heard them find fault in much the same way as long as he could remember. His father knew better than they did. The down had come on Tom’s lip, yet his thoughts and expectations had been hitherto only the reproduction, in changed forms, of the boyish dreams in which he had lived three years ago. He was awakened now with a violent shock. Maggie was frightened at Tom’s pale, trembling silence. There was something else to tell him,—something worse. She threw her arms round him at last, and said, with a half sob: “Oh, Tom—dear, dear Tom, don’t fret too much; try and bear it well.” Tom turned his cheek passively to meet her entreating kisses, and there gathered a moisture in his eyes, which he just rubbed away with his hand. The action seemed to rouse him, for he shook himself and said: “I shall go home, with you, Maggie. Didn’t my father say I was to go?” “No, Tom, father didn’t wish it,” said Maggie, her anxiety about _his_ feeling helping her to master her agitation. What _would_ he do when she told him all? “But mother wants you to come,—poor mother!—she cries so. Oh, Tom, it’s very dreadful at home.” Maggie’s lips grew whiter, and she began to tremble almost as Tom had done. The two poor things clung closer to each other, both trembling,—the one at an unshapen fear, the other at the image of a terrible certainty. When Maggie spoke, it was hardly above a whisper. “And—and—poor father——”