It would be so easy for him to deny all knowledge of the concealed chest—­so easy to lay the robbery on Morton, even if the first were proved—­or even on Evelyn!

I had sent impulsively for Mr. Bainrothe to come to me on the evening of my discovery, but his visit was delayed by a necessity that kept him from home all night, so that I had time to revolve and resolve on my course of action before I saw him, which was not until the following afternoon, and by this time my mind had undergone a change.  He came, but not alone—­his son accompanied him.

I have reason since then to think that Evelyn and Claude Bainrothe had met before their cold and measured interview in my presence.  It was to me a painful and embarrassing one, and this time the graceful ease was all on the other side—­I was preoccupied and agitated, Claude courteous and self-possessed, Evelyn lofty and confident, as though she had lived or trodden down her emotions, and, to my surprise, Mr. Basil Bainrothe wore his accustomed deliberate and self-poised demeanor, making no reference, not even by his expression of face or a glance of his kaleidoscopic eyes, to the sad catastrophe with which by this time I was but too well acquainted.

I had been reading newspapers eagerly all day, when he came, and, from a contradictory mass of evidence, had gleaned some grains of truth.  One fact was beyond contradiction—­a second Samson had drawn down the ruins of a temple, not on the heads of his foes alone, but his friends as well, blinded, as he of old, by the treachery of that basest of all Delilahs, a fawning public!

Yes, we were ruined; the only hope now was in the honesty of Mr. Basil Bainrothe.  Should the gold I saw him hiding away not have been appropriated to the purchase of bank-stocks—­should it have been saved for me—­we might still rejoice in wealth beyond our deserts, and equal to our desires.

We still might keep the old, beloved roof above our heads, preserve one unbroken circle of family domestics—­live without labor, or terror of the future.  But would this be?  I waited, as I still think I should have done, for Mr. Bainrothe to take the initiative in this proceeding.

Impatient and sick-hearted, I saw day after day glide past, without an effort on his part to explain or ameliorate my condition—­one now of excessive and wearing anxiety.

At last he came.  For the first time in his life when a matter of business was in question, he asked for me.  I went to him alone at my own instance, and somewhat to Evelyn’s chagrin, I thought.

I found him in the library, of late our sole receiving-room; the rest were closed and fireless.  For, since the certainty of our misfortune, we had received no society, and would not long be obliged to decline it, Evelyn thought.  Her opinion of the world little justified the pains she had taken to conciliate it.

I found Mr. Bainrothe buried in the deep reading-chair, always in his lifetime occupied by my father, his hand supporting his head, his hat and delicate ivory-headed cane thrown carelessly on the floor beside him—­his whole attitude one of deep dejection.