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.

"Poor Scott! He certainly knows nothing about business matters. I
know he had no desire to increase his private fortune; he tells me
that what interested him in the Cascade Development and Securities
Company was the chance that cheap radium might stimulate scientific
research the world over. Poor Scott!

"Dear, you are not to think for one instant that any trouble which
may involve Scott is due to you or yours. And if it were, Duane, it
could make no difference to him or to me. Money and what it buys is
such a pitiful detail in what goes to make up happiness. Who but I
should understand that!

"Loss of social prestige and position, is a serious matter, I
suppose; I may show my ignorance and inexperience when I tell you
how much more serious to me are other things--like the loss of faith
in one's self or in others--or the loss of the gentler virtues,
which means the loss of w