Stafford unconsciously drew back a little, so that he was almost behind

Sir Stephen, who had covered his eyes with his hands and sat perfectly

motionless, like a half-stunned man looking back at some terrible

danger from which he had only escaped by the skin of his teeth. Then he

dropped his hands from his face and drew a long breath, the kind of

breath a man draws who has been battling with the waves and finds

himself on the shore, exhausted but still alive.

Stafford laid a hand on his shoulder, and Sir Stephen started and

looked up at him as if he had forgotten his presence. A flush, as if of

shame, came upon the great financier's face, and he frowned at the

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papers lying before him, where they had dropped from his hand.

"What an escape, Stafford!" he said, his voice still rather thick and

with a tremour of excitement and even exhaustion in its usually clear

and steady tone. "I am ashamed, my boy, that you should have been a

witness to my defeat: it humiliates, mortifies me!"

"Don't let that worry you, father," said Stafford, scarcely knowing

what he said, for the tumult in his brain, the dread at his heart.

"It is not the first defeat I have suffered in my life; like other

successful men, I have known what it is to fall; and I have laughed and

got up and shaken the dust off myself, so to speak, and gone at the

fight again, all the harder and more determined because of the reverse.

But this--this would have crushed me utterly and forever."

"Do you mean that it would have ruined you completely, father?" said

Stafford.

"Completely!" replied Sir Stephen in a low voice, his head drooping. "I

had staked everything on this venture, had staked even more than I

possessed. I cannot explain all the details, the ramifications, of the

scheme which I have been working. You could not understand them if I

were to talk to you for a week. Suffice it, that if I had failed to get

this concession, I should have been an utterly ruined man, should have

had to go through the bankruptcy court, should have been left without a

penny. And not only that: I should have dragged a great many of the

men, of the friends who had trusted to my ability, who have believed in

me, into the same pit; not only such men as Griffenberg and Wirsch and

the Beltons, but the Plaistows, the Clansdales, and the Fitzharfords.

They would have suffered with me, would have, considered themselves

betrayed."




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