nce.

"Really it won't do, Shotover," he repeated. "You must reform. It's
becoming too frequent. You'd better travel for a time. That's the
proper thing for a man in your position to do when he's in low water.
Not scuttle, of course. I wouldn't on any account have you scuttle.
But, three weeks or a month hence when things are getting into shape,
just travel for a time. I'll arrange it all for you. Only never talk of
cutting your throat again. And you quite understand this is positively
the last time. I am very much in earnest, my dear boy, nothing will
move me. This settlement is final. And we'll just run up quietly to
town to-morrow and have a talk with my lawyers, Fox and Goteway. Very
civil and accommodating fellow, Goteway--he may be able to make some
suggestions. Very nice, confidential-mannered person, Goteway. Knows
how to hold his tongue and doesn't ask unnecessary questions--useful
man, Goteway----"

Which things coming to the knowledge of Lady Louisa Barking moved her
at once to wrath, and to deepened conviction that the moment for
decisive action had arrived. It appeared to her that her father had put
himself out of court. His weakness regarding his eldest son had
practically delivered him into her hand. She congratulated herself upon
the good which is thus beneficently permitted to spring out of evil.
Yet while recognising that a just Providence sometimes, at all events,
overrules human folly to the production of happy results, she was by no
means disposed to spare the mortal whose individual foolishness had
given the divine wisdom its opportunity. Therefore when, some few days
later, Lord Fallowfeild called on her, after a third or fourth
interview with Messrs. Fox and Goteway--beaming, expansive, from the
sense of a merciful action accomplished--she received him in a
distinctly repressive manner. The great, white and gold drawing-rooms
in Albert Gate were not more frigid or unbending than the bearing of
their mistress as she suffered her father's embrace. And that amiable
nobleman, notwithstanding his large frame and exalted social position,
felt himself shiver inwardly in the presence of his daughter, even as
he could remember shivering when, as a small schoolboy, he had been
summoned to the dread presence of the headmaster.

"Very good rooms these of yours, Louisa," he began hastily. "Always
have admired these rooms. Capital space for entertaining. Barking was
quite right to secure the house as soon a