romised to have the victim liberated by the direct
interference of the Secretary of State, but failed to get anything
of the kind accomplished. The girls were completely cowed by the
enormity of the misfortune; so that Tom's name was hardly mentioned
except in sad and confidential whispers. But of all the sufferers Sir
Thomas suffered the most. To him it was a positive disgrace, weighing
down every moment of his life. At Travers and Treason he could not
hold up his head boldly and open his mouth loudly as had always been
his wont. At Travers and Treason there was not a clerk who did not
know that "the governor" was an altered man since this misfortune had
happened to the hope of the firm. What passed between Sir Thomas and
his son on the occasion has already been told in a previous chapter.
That Sir Thomas, on the whole, behaved with indulgence must be
acknowledged; but he felt that his son must in truth absent himself
from Lombard Street for a time.

Tom had been advised by his father to go forth and see the world. A
prolonged tour had been proposed to him which to most young men might
seem to have great attraction. To him it would have had attraction
enough, had it not been for Ayala. There would have been hardly any
limit to the allowance made to him, and he would have gone forth
armed with introductions, which would have made every port a happy
home to him. But as soon as the tour was suggested he resolved at
once that he could not move himself to a distance from Ayala. What he
expected,--what he even hoped,--he could not tell himself. But while
Ayala was in London, and Ayala was unmarried, he could not be made to
take himself far away.

He was thoroughly ashamed of himself. He was not at all the man who
could bear a week of imprisonment and not think himself disgraced.
For a day or two he shut himself up altogether in his lodgings, and
never once showed himself at the Mountaineers. Faddle came to him,
but he snubbed Faddle at first, remembering all the severe things his
father had said about the Faddles in general. But he soon allowed
that feeling to die away when the choice seemed to be between Faddle
and solitude. Then he crept out in the dark and ate his dinners with
Faddle at some tavern, generally paying the bill for both of them.
After dinner he would play half-a-dozen games of billiards with his
friend at some unknown billiard-room, and then creep home to his
lodgings,--a blighted human being!

At last,