d dollars
supposed to be invested in approved securities,--really disposed of in
a manner only known to his Excellency,--I should have six months to
look about me. Now, remaining out of my "bonus" was _nil_, out of my
"reserve fund" ten thousand dollars. This was enough. But alas! how
happened it that this sum was in my hands? Because I had borrowed
five thousand from the bank! If they wouldn't let their own manager
overdraw, whom would they? So I overdrew. But if this money wasn't
back before the monthly balancing, Jones would know! And I dared not
rely on being able to stop his mouth again. When I said Johnny Carr
was the only honest man in Aureataland I forgot Jones. To my grief and
annoyance Jones also was honest, and Jones would consider it his duty
to let the directors know of my overdraft. If once they knew, I was
lost, for an overdraft effected privately from the safe by the manager
is, I do not deny it, decidedly irregular. Unless I could add five
thousand dollars to my ten thousand before the end of the month I
should have to bolt!

This melancholy conclusion was reenforced and rendered demonstrable by
a letter which arrived, to crown my woes, from my respected father,
informing me that he had unhappily become indebted to our chairman in
the sum of two thousand pounds, the result of a deal between them,
that he had seen the chairman, that the chairman was urgent for
payment, that he used most violent language against our family in
general, ending by declaring his intention of stopping my salary to
pay the parental debt. "If he doesn't like it he may go, and small
loss." This was a most unjustifiable proceeding, but I was hardly in a
position to take up a high moral attitude toward the chairman, and in
the result I saw myself confronted with the certainty of beggary and
the probability of jail. But for this untoward reverse of fortune I
might have taken courage and made a clean breast of my misdoings,
relying on the chairman's obligations to my father to pull me through.
But now, where was I? I was, as Donna Antonia put it, very deep in
indeed. So overwhelmed was I by my position, and so occupied with my
frantic efforts to improve it, that I did not even find time to go and
see the signorina, much as I needed comfort; and, as the days went on,
I fell into such despair that I went nowhere, but sat dismally in my
own rooms, looking at my portmanteau, and wondering how soon I must
pack and fly, if not for life, a