ing over his breakfast,
Sir George Haredale was gloomily contemplating his own. He had read most
of his letters, and had impatiently pushed aside the sheaf of bills and
applications for money which poured like a flood upon him at every post.
Some of them were peremptory and some imploring. But they had been
coming in for so long that the master of Haredale Park was more or less
hardened to them. But one communication was distinctly out of the common
and worried him excessively.

"What the deuce does it mean?" he soliloquized irritably. "And who are
these people, Absalom & Co.? I never had any dealings with them.
According to their note-paper they call themselves financial agents, but
the whole thing looks more like a communication from money-lenders. Yet
I don't see how I owe them anything. They write to remind me that in
virtue of an assignment made by Mr. Raymond Copley of a certain date I
am in their debt to the extent of more than forty thousand pounds. What
the dickens is an assignment? And what does Copley mean by doing a thing
of this sort without consulting me? These people hope I shall make
arrangements to liquidate the debt in the course of the next fourteen
days. Why, they might just as well ask me to find as many millions. But
I daresay there is nothing really alarming about the thing if I only
understood it. I wish I had a head for figures. I wish my father had
given me a business training. Still, Copley will put it right. Perhaps
he is annoyed at the way that May has been behaving. But I hardly think
he will visit her folly upon me. However, I must say the thing is
alarming."

Sir George shuffled the letter into his pocket as the door opened and
May entered. She was dressed for going out and was buttoning her driving
gloves round her wrists. Outside on the gravel stood a smart cob in a
Whitechapel cart.

"Where are you going?" Sir George asked.

"To the station to meet Alice Carden. She will be here for lunch."

"I had forgotten her," Sir George murmured. "To tell you the truth, my
dear, I am rather sorry you asked her."

"But I was always fond of Alice."

"Yes, of course, why not? The girl is all right. But, between ourselves,
Carden is a bit of a bad egg. He comes of an old family, and I recollect
when his position was as good as ours. But he muddled his money away.
He always affected the society of those sportsmen who are ready to do
anybody. He made the mistake of regarding everybody as a fool