"Then you will not make him your partner?" he resumed.
"Mr. Dare!"
"I suppose you will take in Halliburton?"
"It is very probable. Whoever I take must be a man of probity and honour: and a gentleman," he added, with a stress upon the word. "William Halliburton is all that."
Anthony Dare rose with a groan. He could contend no longer.
"My sons have been my bane," he uttered from between his bloodless lips. "I wonder, sometimes, whether they were born bad."
"No," said Thomas Ashley. "The badness has come with their training."