And yet here it was, blatant and hideous, and so transparently vulgar! Mary knew the full significance of the disaster; she had seen something of it, two years before, in the house of one of the estate farmers who had fallen into the hands of a money-lender. She had seen the mother of the family bowed and distracted, whilst a gin-soddened wretch sat in a priceless oak chair and puffed some dreadful tobacco. And the man had been quite insolent when Mary had spoken to him. That was bad enough, but to have the same thing at Dashwood was a thousand times worse. It seemed to Mary that she could catch the reek of that vile tobacco now. But something had to be done; it was useless to stand there idle. "Have you spoken to the people?" Mary asked. "The servants----" "Are all in bed except old Slight," Sir George whined. "Slight managed that. The other servants don't know anything for the present." "Well, that is something gained. I have been to see Lady Dashwood. It was the most shameful moment of my life, but I managed to ask for the jewels. No, I did not get them--I don't believe that Lady Dashwood has them. I believe that she has some secret trouble of her own; I begin to believe that there is something terribly wrong with our family. There is no hope from Lady Dashwood." Sir George whined in a feeble kind of way. Mary's heart overflowed with bitter contempt. This was the head of the family, the man to be relied upon to uphold the traditions of a long line of glorious ancestors! The girl steeled herself to face the inevitable; she knew now that she would have to rely solely on her own exertions. She passed through the open window into the drawing-room, which would never be quite the same to her again. Nothing appeared to be altered; the soft shaded lamps were here, the mellow subdued light playing on old furniture and pictures, and the flowers artistically arranged in their priceless vases. Surely sorrow and shame and humiliation would not touch the picture with chill fingers! There he was, lounging back on a Chippendale couch, with his muddy boots on a hassock of Gobelin tapestry, his sullen face half-ashamed and half-defiant. His profession would have been apparent to anyone who had ever met one of the tribe before. Those men were of a race apart, idlers and loafers, who can face sorrow and suffering and the breaking up of homes without a spark of human feeling. The man looked up at Mary's pale haughty face, with a certain dumb admiration in his bleared eye. "Who are you, and what are you doing here?" Mary demanded. "Tell me that."