“Oh! was it ‘trading in futures,’ as I heard Phil express it one day, when you were all discussing stocks?” questioned Mollie.
Her companion bent a glance of surprise upon her.
“Well, yes; something of that kind,” he said, while a bitter smile curled his lips.
“Did—did you lose very much that way, papa?”
“Several thousands, although three years ago I should have regarded the amount as but a drop out of the bucket; but now, since it has taken almost my last dollar, it seems a great deal,” the unhappy man replied, with a sigh.
“Papa, excuse me,” and the girl flushed vividly as she spoke, “but isn’t ‘dealing in futures’ a—one way of gambling? Of course, I do not know much about such things, but I listened quite attentively one day when you were talking with Mr. Temple—I think he was explaining some method in which he was interested—and it seemed to me very much like a game of chance.”
“It is, my darling,” said Mr. Heatherford, with a flush of shame, “and I have always said that it is a disreputable business, and thousands of men are annually ruined by it, homes are made desolate, while half the cases of suicide in the world result from the despair which just such ruin as now stares me in the face entails.”
“Oh, papa!” sharply cried the fair girl, and growing deathly pale, while she searched his face with a look of horror in her eyes. The man drew her arm around his neck and held it there with a grip which seemed to her startled heart to indicate that he was clinging to her for salvation from the very despair of which he had spoken. But he did not appear to heed her cry and continued with the same hopeless note in his tone, and with something of scorn, also:
“I would never have believed, even a year ago, that I could ever sink to such a level; for I had only contempt for such measures and for men who have made their fortunes in that way; but when I found everything going against me and my resources fast dwindling to nothing, I grew wild to retrieve myself, chiefly for your sake, however. I could not endure the thought that you, who had always had every wish gratified—who had known nothing but luxury, and floated upon the topmost wave of prosperity—you who are so fitted to shine in society, should be reduced to poverty, and so, at Mr. Temple’s suggestion, I ventured my last dollar on one throw, and—have lost.”