Through One Administration

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

"Who trusted me!" Richard finished, gnawing his white lips. "I see it in exactly the same light myself, and it does not make it easier to bear. That is the way a thing looks when it fails. Suppose it had succeeded. It may succeed yet. They trusted me, and, I tell you, I trusted myself."

It was easy to see just what despair would seize him if the worst came to the worst, and how powerless he would be in its clutches. He was like a reed beaten by the wind, even now. A sudden paroxysm of fear fell upon him.

"Great God!" he cried. "It can't fail! What could I say to them—how could I explain it?"

A thousand wild thoughts surged through Tredennis' brain as he heard him. The old sense of helplessness was strong upon him. To his upright strength there seemed no way of judging fairly of, or dealing practically with, such dishonor and weakness. What standard could be applied to a man who lied agreeably in his very thoughts of himself and his actions? He had scarcely made a statement during the last hour which had not contained some airy falsehood. Of whom was it he thought in his momentary anguish? Not of Bertha—not of her children—not of the gentle old scholar, who had always been lenient with his faults. It was of himself he was thinking—of Richard Amory, robbed of his refined picturesqueness by mere circumstance and placed by bad luck at a baleful disadvantage!

For a few minutes there was a silence. Richard sat with his brow upon his hands, his elbows on the table before him. Tredennis paced to and fro, looking downward. At length Richard raised his head. He did so because Tredennis had stopped his walk.

"What is it?" he asked.

Tredennis walked over to him and sat down. He was pale, and wore a set and rigid look, the chief characteristic of which was that it expressed absolutely nothing. His voice was just as hard and expressed as little when he spoke.

"I have a proposition to make to you," he said, "and I will preface it by the statement that, as a business man, I am perfectly well aware that it is almost madness to make it. I say 'almost.' Let it rest there. I will assume the risks you have run in the Westoria scheme. Invest the money you have charge of in something safer. You say there are chances of success. I will take those chances."

"What!" cried Richard. "What!"

He sat upright, staring. He did not believe the evidence of his senses; but Tredennis went on, without the quiver of a muscle, speaking steadily, almost monotonously.