tter, also. He was an admirable
soldier, but a wretched man of business; and his monetary affairs had
never prospered until he had entrusted them to the hands of the cousins
Jervase & Jervoyce. Little by little he had been drawn on until the
greater part of his investments lay at their control.

And now for the pretty girl who is staring with so alarmed and white a
visage on the tumult of the hall. This is General Boswell's daughter,
sole child of a late marriage, and the apple of his eye. She has been
wandering quite consciously towards an engagement with young Polson;
and expects him, with excellent reason, to declare himself at almost
any hour. She knows of her father's association with Jervase & Jervoyce,
and, indeed, it has been a familiar thing to her ever since she came to
be of an age to understand.

Thus the brief and terrible colloquy between the cousins translates
itself variously for every listener.

To John Jervase it cries out of guilt detected.

To Polson Jervase it speaks of half-a-dozen things at once; it awakes
with a crushing sense of certainty that late suspicion; it tells him of
the ruin of the one man whom he most loves and honours in this narrow
world--not his father, but the grey old father of his sweetheart; it
tells him in an instant of a life of narrow means for the girl he loves;
it hurls his own hopes in the mire, and makes the very thought of them
a dishonour; it snatches from him the bright prospect of the career
on which he has set his heart, the gate to which stood wide open but
a moment earlier. And all this in the tick of a watch, in the space of
time filled by one agonised beat of the heart.

For the girl, whatever it may mean hereafter, it means for the moment
nothing more than a confused leaping of two thoughts in one. Her mind is
conscious only of a mingled cry of 'Polson!' and of 'Father!'

So Guilt stares at Guilt, and Terror and Suspicion stare at both of
them; and the roaring wind and lashing rain make exclamation dumb.

Jervase was the first to recover himself. He thrust his cousin on one
side, and butted towards the open door; but he strove in vain to close
it, until his son and the General lent their aid. The hall was sown
with broken glass and fragments of picture frames, and here and there
an engraving lay wet and crumpled, but not even the housewife regarded
these things for the time being.

John Jervase turned from the final struggle with the door, and looked
ab