Mrs. Lansing’s eyes sparkled with anger.

“I believe it began soon after you left.  I don’t know whether Sylvia expects me to make excuses for her, but I won’t do anything of the kind; there are none that could be made.  She has behaved shamefully!”

“One must be just,” George said with an effort.  “After all, she promised me nothing.”

“Perhaps not in so many words.  But she knew what you expected, and I have no doubt she led you to believe—­”

George raised his hand.

“I think there’s nothing to be said—­the thing must be faced somehow.  I feel rather badly hit; you won’t mind if I go out and walk about a little?”

Mrs. Lansing was glad to let him go; the sight of his hard-set face hurt her.  In another minute he was walking up and down the terrace, but he stopped presently and leaned on the low wall.  Hitherto he had believed in Sylvia with an unshaken faith, but now a flood of suspicion poured in on him; above all, there was the telling fact that as soon as he had gone, she had begun to lead on his rival.  The shock he had suffered had brought George illumination.  Sylvia could never have had an atom of affection for him; she had merely made his loyalty serve her turn.  She had done so even before she married Dick Marston; though he had somehow retained his confidence in her then.  He had been a fool from the beginning!

The intense bitterness of which he was conscious was wholly new to him, but it was comprehensible.  Just in all his dealings, he expected honesty from others, and, though generous in many ways, he had not Bland’s tolerant nature; he looked for more than the latter and had less charity.  There was a vein of hardness in the man who had loved Sylvia largely because he believed in her.  Trickery and falseness were abhorrent to him, and now the woman he had worshiped stood revealed in her deterrent reality.

After a while he pulled himself together, and, going back to the house, entered Herbert’s library where, less because of his interest in the matter than as a relief from painful thoughts, he opened the envelope given him and took out the statement.  For a few moments the figures puzzled him, and then he broke into a bitter laugh.  The money that he had entrusted to his cousin’s care had melted away.

During the next two or three minutes he leaned back, motionless, in his chair; then he took up a pencil and lighted a cigar.  Since he was ruined, he might as well ascertain how it had happened, and two facts became obvious from his study of the document:  Herbert had sold sound securities, and had mortgaged land; and then placed the proceeds in rubber shares.  This was perhaps permissible, but it did not explain what had induced an astute business man to hold the shares until they had fallen to their remarkably low value.  There was a mystery here, and George in his present mood was keenly suspicious.  He had no doubt that Herbert had left the statement because