He had heard even more than his worst misgivings had suggested to him, and the shock of it had destroyed something of his self-control. For the time being he was in no lenient mood.
"I know what people will say!" Richard exclaimed. "Do you suppose I have not thought of it a thousand times? I know what I should say if I did not know the circumstances. It is the circumstances that make the difference."
"The fact that they are your circumstances, and not another man's," began Tredennis; but there he checked himself. "I beg your pardon," he said, coldly. "I have no right to meet your confidence with blame. It will do no good. If I can give you no help, I might better be silent. There were circumstances which appeared extenuating to you, I suppose."
He was angered by his own anger, as he had often been before. He told himself that he was making the matter a personal cause, as usual; but how could he hear that her very generosity and simplicity had been used against her by the man who should have guarded her interests as his first duty, without burning with sharp and fierce indignation.
"If I understand you," he said, "your only hope of recovering what you have lost lies in the success of the Westoria scheme?"
"Yes," answered Amory, with his forehead on his hands, "that is the diabolical truth!"
"And you have lost?"
"Once I was driven into saying to you that if the thing should fail it would mean ruin to me. That was the truth, too."
The colonel stood still.
"Ruin to you!" he said. "Ruin to your wife—ruin to your children—serious loss to the old man who"—