"What became of Selincourt?" asked Katherine, and was instantly sorry she had spoken, because of the pain in her father's face.
"I don't know. I never heard of him from the day he left the counting-house until Astor M'Kree read his name from that letter, but I thought of him a good bit. It is hard enough for a man to do well with an unblemished character, but to be thrown out of a situation branded as a gambler is ruin, and nothing short of it."
"What became of the other man—the one who was a gambler?" asked
Katherine.
"I don't know. He remained with the firm until the crash came. I fancy Selincourt's fate made a great impression on him, for I never heard of his gambling after Selincourt's dismissal," answered her father.
"How strange that he could not clear himself! Do you expect he had been gambling really, as well as the other one?" Katherine said quickly.
"I am sure he had not," replied 'Duke Radford. "He was not that sort at all. But the thing that bowled him over was that he was known to have money in his possession, a considerable amount, for which he could not or would not account."
"Still, I don't see that you were so much to blame," said Katherine soothingly. "If the man was accused and could not clear himself, then plainly there was something wrong somewhere: and after all you simply held your tongue; it was not as if you had stolen anything, letting the blame fall on him, or had falsely accused him in any way."
"Just the arguments with which I comforted myself when I kept silent and profited by the downfall of a man who was blameless," 'Duke Radford replied. "But though there may be a sort of truth in them, it is not real truth, and I have been paying the price ever since of that guilty silence of mine."
"Father, why do you tell me all this now?" cried Katherine protestingly. Never in her heart would she have quite so much admiration for her father again, and the knowledge brought keen suffering with it.
He drew a long breath that was like a sobbing sigh; only too well did he understand what he had done, but he had counted the cost, and was not going to shirk the consequences.