And again she wrote: 

“I saw in the papers that the Algonquin Trust Company had closed its doors; I read the heartbreaking details of the crowds besieging it, the lines of frightened people standing there in the rain all night long.  It is dreadful, terrible!

“Who are these Wall Street men who would not help the Algonquin when they could?  Why is the Clearing House so bitter?  I don’t know what it all means; I read columns about poor Jack Dysart—­words and figures and technical phrases and stock quotations—­and it means nothing, and I understand nothing of it save that it is all a fierce outcry against him and against the men with whom he was financially involved.

“The papers are so gloomy, so eager in their search for evil, so merciless, so exultant when scandal is unearthed, that I can scarcely bear to read them.  Why do they drag in unhappy people who know nothing about these matters?  The interview with your mother and Naida, which you say is false, was most dreadful.  How cruel men are!

“Tell them I love them dearly; tell your father, too.  And, dear, I don’t know exactly how Scott and I are situated, but if we can be of any financial use to you, please, please let us!  Our fortune, when it came to us, was, I believe, all in first mortgages and railroad securities.  I believe that Scott made some changes in our investments under advice from your father.  I don’t know what they were.

“Don’t bother your father with such details now; he has enough to think of lying there in his grief, bewildered, broken in mind and body.  Duane, is it not more merciful that he is unable to understand what the papers are saying?

    “Dear, heart and soul I am loyal to you and yours.”

She wrote again: 

“Yes, I had a talk with Scott.  I did not know he had been receiving all those letters from your attorneys.  Magnelius Grandcourt manages the investments.  Scott’s brokers are Stainer & Elting; our attorneys are, as you know, Landon, Brooks & Gayfield.

“Duane, I absolutely forbid you to worry.  My brother is of age, sound in mind and body, responsible for whatever he does or has done.  It is his affair if he solicits advice, his affair if he follows it.  Your father has no responsibility whatever in the matter of the Cascade Development and Securities Company.  Besides, Scott tells me that what he did was against the advice of Mr. Tappan.

    “I remember last winter that he brought a Mr. Skelton to luncheon,
    and a horrid man named Klawber.