ed," said his wife, "for not taking enough interest in your
business to even come near it. If we're brought back to the day of
small things, I guess it's a lesson for me, Silas."

"Oh, I don't know about the lesson," he said wearily.

That night she showed him the anonymous scrawl which had kindled her
fury against him. He turned it listlessly over in his hand. "I guess
I know who it's from," he said, giving it back to her, "and I guess you
do too, Persis."

"But how--how could he----"

"Mebbe he believed it," said Lapham, with patience that cut her more
keenly than any reproach. "YOU did."

Perhaps because the process of his ruin had been so gradual, perhaps
because the excitement of preceding events had exhausted their capacity
for emotion, the actual consummation of his bankruptcy brought a
relief, a repose to Lapham and his family, rather than a fresh
sensation of calamity. In the shadow of his disaster they returned to
something like their old, united life; they were at least all together
again; and it will be intelligible to those whom life has blessed with
vicissitude, that Lapham should come home the evening after he had
given up everything, to his creditors, and should sit down to his
supper so cheerful that Penelope could joke him in the old way, and
tell him that she thought from his looks they had concluded to pay him
a hundred cents on every dollar he owed them.

As James Bellingham had taken so much interest in his troubles from the
first, Lapham thought he ought to tell him, before taking the final
step, just how things stood with him, and what ho meant to do.
Bellingham made some futile inquiries about his negotiations with the
West Virginians, and Lapham told him they had come to nothing. He
spoke of the New York man, and the chance that he might have sold out
half his business to him. "But, of course, I had to let him know how
it was about those fellows."

"Of course," said Bellingham, not seeing till afterwards the full
significance of Lapham's action.

Lapham said nothing about Rogers and the Englishmen. He believed that
he had acted right in that matter, and he was satisfied; but he did not
care to have Bellingham, or anybody, perhaps, think he had been a fool.

All those who were concerned in his affairs said he behaved well, and
even more than well, when it came to the worst. The prudence, the good
sense, which he had shown in the first years of his success, and of
which his gr