. He felt he
ought to dress and come downstairs to receive you. He's very far from
well. I hope you'll do your best not to--to think of him too harshly."

"I shouldn't think harshly of any one simply because he'd had business
bad luck."

"He _has_ had business bad luck--but that isn't all. We'll sit here."

Taking one corner of a long garden-seat that stood in the shade of an
elm, she signed to him to take the other. On the left they had the
Corinthian-columned portico of the garden front of the house; in the
distance, the multicolored slopes of the town. Olivia, at least, felt
the stimulating effect of the, golden forenoon sunshine.

As for Ashley, in spite of his outward self-possession, he was too
bewildered to feel anything at all. Having rushed on from New York by
night, he was now getting his first daylight glimpse of America; and,
though, owing to more urgent subjects for, thought, he was not
consciously giving his attention to things outward, he had an oppressive
sense of immensity and strangeness. The arch of the sky was so sweeping,
the prospect before them so gorgeous, the sunlight so hard, and the
distances so clear! For the first time in his life a new continent
aroused in him an odd sense of antagonism. He had never had it in Africa
or Asia or in the isles of the Southern Sea. There he had always gone
with a sense of power, with the instinct of the conqueror; while
here.... But Olivia was speaking, saying things too appalling for
immediate comprehension.

Her voice was gentle and even; she spoke with a certain kind of ease.
She appeared to rehearse something already learned by heart.

"So, you see, he didn't merely lose his own money; he lost theirs--the
money of his clients--which was in his trust. I hadn't heard of it when
I wrote you in New York, otherwise I should have told you. But now that
you know it--"

He looked mystified. "He's jolly lucky not to be in England," he said,
trying not to seem as stunned as he felt. "There that sort of thing is a
very serious--"

"Offence," she hastened to say. "Oh, so it is here. I must tell you
quite plainly that if the money hadn't come papa would have had to go
to--"

"But the money did come?"

She made a point of finishing her sentence. "If the money hadn't come
papa would have had to go to prison. Yes, the money did come. A friend
of--of papa's--and Drusilla's--advanced it. It's been paid over to the
people who were going to law."

"So that part