"Oh, my God!" he said presently. "What am I going to do!"
Elizabeth gathered herself for one of those ordeals which, in all families, there is one stronger than the rest to meet and deal with.
"Here, sit up." She shook him. "Sit up and tell me what ails you." The fear that he was intoxicated had left her, and there was relief in this. "And take off your hat." She seized the hat from his head and laid it on the little mahogany stand beside her bed. "If you knew how ridiculous you look!"
He sat up at this and weakly began drawing off his gloves. When he had them off, he drew them through his hand, slapped them in his palm, and then with a weary sigh, said:
"Well, I'm ruined!"
"Oh, don't be dramatic!" She was herself now. "Tell me what scrape you're in, and we'll see how to get you out of it." She was quite composed. She drew up a chair for him and one for herself. Some silly escapade, no doubt, she thought, which in his weakness he was half glad to make the most of. He had removed his overcoat and taken the chair she had placed for him. Then he raised his face, and when she saw the expression, she felt the blood leave her cheeks; she knew that the trouble was real. She struggled an instant against a sickness that assailed her, and then, calming herself, prepared to meet it.
"Well?" she said.
"Bess," he began fearfully, and his head dropped again. "Bess"--his voice was very strange--"it's--the--bank."
She shivered as if a dead cold blast had struck her. In the moment before there had swept through her mind a thousand possibilities, but never this one. She closed her eyes. There was a sharp pain in her heart, exactly as if she had suddenly crushed a finger.
"The bank!" she exclaimed in a whisper. "Oh, Dick!"