For months past he had postponed a thorough survey of his liabilities, with the shallowness of his character, preferring to ignore the worst. Even now, when he found himself hopelessly involved in debt, he could raise no better reason for it than his own "chronic ill-luck!"
With this phrase he stifled his conscience. Where another man would have realized the necessity for immediate action, he sat there numbed, half unbelieving, a martyr in his own opinion.
He felt no spur toward work as a means to solve the enigma. He could only look back and vent his anger on those concerned in his career who had failed at length to come forward to the assistance of a wastrel.
He cursed his father, his hand clenched, his green eyes full of spite.
He could see him now, still erect despite the heavy burden of years, at that final painful interview, when heart-sore at his son's extravagance he had flatly refused further help.
He allowed Stephen two hundred a year, in addition to the eighty pounds his mother had left him, annually, considering this a fair arrangement, and had told him crudely to "go and work!"
But work was the last thing Stephen sought. He had had the misfortune when barely twenty to meet a rich widow, double his age, who had taken a fancy to the boy.
She had made him a home in her pleasant house, petted and fed him much in the fashion she would have treated a favourite spaniel, but secretly amused by his pretensions.
With his sentimental, greenish eyes under their long, fair lashes, his clear complexion and pointed chin he had seemed not unlike a pretty girl.
He suited her purpose very well, not important enough to cause scandal, and this rich and somewhat lonely woman had paid gladly for his companionship.