"Can you understand me, sir?"

Gabriel Cassilis sat in his own study. It was the day after the garden-party. He slept through the night, and in the morning rose and dressed as usual. Then he took his seat in his customary chair at his table. Before him lay papers, but he did not read them. He sat upright, his frock-coat tightly buttoned across his chest, and rapped his knuckles with his gold eyeglasses as if he was thinking.

They brought him breakfast, and he took a cup of tea. Then he motioned them to take the things away. They gave him the Times, and he laid it mechanically at his elbow. But he did not speak, nor did he seem to attend to what was done around him. And his eyes had a far-off look in them.

"Can you understand me, sir?"

The speaker was his secretary. He came in a cab, panting, eager to see if there was still any hope. Somehow or other it was whispered already in the City that Gabriel Cassilis had had some sort of stroke. And there was terrible news besides.

Mr. Mowll asked because there was something in his patron's face which frightened him. His eyes were changed. They had lost the keen sharp look which in a soldier means victory; in a scholar, clearness of purpose; in a priest, knowledge of human nature and ability to use that knowledge in a financier, the power and the intuition of success. That was gone. In its place an expression almost of childish softness. And another thing—the lips, once set firm and close, were parted now and mobile.

The other things were nothing. That a man of sixty-five should in a single night become a man of eighty; that the iron grey hair should become white; that a steady hand should shake, and straight shoulders be bent. It was the look in his face, the far-off look, which made the secretary ask that question before he went on.

Mr. Cassilis nodded his head gently. He could understand.

"You left the telegrams unopened for a week and more!" cried the impatient clerk. "Why—Oh, why!—did you not let me open them?"

There was no reply.

"If I had known, I could have acted. Even the day before yesterday I could have acted. The news came yesterday morning. It was all over the City by three. And Eldorado's down to nothing in a moment."

Mr. Cassilis looked a mild inquiry. No anxiety in that look at all.

"Eldorado won't pay up her interest. It's due next week. Nothing to pay it with. Your agent in New York telegraphed this a week ago. He's been confirming the secret every day since. O Lord! O Lord! And you the only man who had the knowledge, and all that stake in it! Can you speak, sir?"

For his master's silence was terrible to him.

"Listen, then. Ten days ago Eldorados went down after Wylie's pamphlet. You told him what to write and you paid him, just as you did last year. But you tried to hide it from me. That was wrong, sir. I've served you faithfully for twenty years. But never mind that. You bought in at 64. Then the Eldorado minister wrote to the paper. Stock went up to 75. You stood to win, only the day before yesterday, £260,000; more than a quarter of a million. Yesterday, by three, they were down to 16. This morning they are down to 8. And it's settling-day, and you lose—you lose—your all. Oh, what a day, what a day!"

Still no complaint, not even a sigh from the patient man in the Windsor chair. Only that gentle tapping of the knuckles, and that far-off look.

"The great name of Gabriel Cassilis dragged in the dust! All your reputation gone—the whole work of your life—O sir! can't you feel even that? Can't you feel the dreadful end of it all—Gabriel Cassilis, the great Gabriel Cassilis, a Lame Duck!"

Not even that. The work of his life was forgotten with all its hopes, and the great financier, listening to his clerk with the polite impatience of one who listens to a wearisome sermon, was trying to understand what was the meaning of that black shadow which lay upon his mind and made him uneasy. For the rest a perfect calm in his brain.

"People will say it was the shock of the Eldorado smash. Well, sir, it wasn't that; I know so much; but it's best to let people think so. If you haven't a penny left in the world you have your character, and that's as high as ever.

"Fortunately," Mr. Mowll went on, "my own little savings were not in Eldorado Stock. But my employment is gone, I suppose. You will recommend me, I hope, sir. And I do think that I've got some little reputation in the City."

It was not for want of asserting himself that this worthy man failed, at any rate, of achieving his reputation. For twenty years he had magnified his office as confidential adviser of a great City light; among his friends and in his usual haunts he successfully posed as one burdened with the weight of affairs, laden with responsibility, and at all times oppressed by the importance of his thoughts. He carried a pocket-book which shut with a clasp; in the midst of a conversation he would stop, become abstracted, rush at the pocket-book, so to speak, confide a jotting to its care, shut it with a snap, and then go on with a smile and an excuse. Some said that he stood in with Gabriel Cassilis; all thought that he shared his secrets, and gave advice when asked for it.

As a matter of fact, he was a clerk, and had always been a clerk; but he was a clerk who knew a few things which might have been awkward if told generally. He had a fair salary, but no confidence, no advice, and not much more real knowledge of what his chief was doing than any outsider. And in this tremendous smash it was a great consolation to him to reflect that the liabilities represented an amount for which it was really a credit to fail.

Mr. Mowll has since got another place where the transactions are not so large, but perhaps his personal emoluments greater. In the evenings he will talk of the great failure.

"We stood to win," he will say, leaning back with a superior smile,—"we stood to win £260,000. We lost a million and a quarter. I told him not to hang on too long. Against my advice he did. I remember—ah, only four days before it happened—he said to me, 'Mowll, my boy,' he said, 'I've never known you wrong yet. But for once I fancy my own opinion. We've worked together for twenty years,' he said, 'and you've the clearest head of any man I ever saw,' he said. 'But here I think you're wrong. And I shall hold on for another day or two,' he said. Ah, little he knew what a day or two would bring forth! And he hasn't spoken since. Plays with his little boy, and goes about in a Bath-chair. What a man he was! and what a pair—if I may say so—we made between us among the bulls and the bears! Dear me, dear me!"

It may be mentioned here that everything was at once given up; the house in Kensington Palace Gardens, with its costly furniture, its carriages, plate, library, and pictures. Mr. Cassilis signed whatever documents were brought for signature without hesitation, provided a copy of his own signature was placed before him. Otherwise he could not write his name.

And never a single word of lamentation, reproach, or sorrow. The past was, and is still, dead to him; all the past except one thing, and that is ever with him.

For sixty years of his life, this man of the City, whose whole desire was to make money, to win in the game which he played with rare success and skill, regarded bankruptcy as the one thing to be dreaded, or at least to be looked upon, because it was absurd to dread it, as a thing bringing with it the whole of dishonour. Not to meet your engagements was to be in some sort a criminal. And now he was proclaimed as one who could not meet his engagements.

If he understood what had befallen him he did not care about it. The trouble was slight indeed in comparison with the other disaster. The honour of his wife and the legitimacy of his child—these were gone; and the man felt what it is that is greater than money gained or money lost.

The blow which fell upon him left his brain clear while it changed the whole course of his thoughts and deprived him partially of memory. But it destroyed his power of speech. That rare and wonderful disease which seems to attack none but the strongest, which separates the brain from the tongue, takes away the knowledge and the sense of language, and kills the power of connecting words with things, while it leaves that of understanding what is said—the disease which doctors call Aphasia—was upon Mr. Gabriel Cassilis.

In old men this is an incurable disease. Gabriel Cassilis will never speak again. He can read, listen, and understand, but he can frame no words with his lips nor write them with his hand. He is a prisoner who has free use of his limbs. He is separated from the world by a greater gulf than that which divides the blind and the deaf from the rest of us, because he cannot make known his thoughts, his wants, or his wishes.

It took some time to discover what was the matter with him. Patients are not often found suffering from aphasia, and paralysis was the first name given to his disease.

But it was very early found out that Mr. Cassilis understood all that was said to him, and by degrees they learned what he liked and what he disliked.

Victoria Cassilis sat up-stairs, waiting for something—she knew not what—to happen. Her maid told her that Mr. Cassilis was ill; she made no reply; she did not ask to see him; she did not ask for any further news of him. She sat in her own room for two days, waiting.

Then Joseph Jagenal asked if he might see her.

She refused at first; but on hearing that he proposed to stay in the house till she could receive him, she gave way.

He came from Lawrence, perhaps. He would bring her a message of some kind; probably a menace.

"You have something to say to me, Mr. Jagenal?" Her face was set hard, but her eyes were wistful. He saw that she was afraid. When a woman is afraid, you may make her do pretty well what you please.

"I have a good deal to tell you, Mrs. Cassilis; and I am sorry to say it is of an unpleasant nature.

"I have heard," he went on, "from Mr. Colquhoun that you made a remarkable statement in the presence of Miss Fleming, and in the hearing of Mr. Cassilis."

"Lawrence informed you correctly, I have no doubt," she replied coldly.

"That statement of course was untrue," said Joseph, knowing that no record ever was more true. "And therefore I venture to advise——"

"On the part of Lawrence?"

"In the name of Mr. Colquhoun, partly; partly in your own interest——"

"Go on, if you please, Mr. Jagenal."

"Believing that statement to be untrue," he repeated, "for otherwise I could not give this advice, I recommend to all parties concerned—silence. Your husband's paralysis is attributed to the shock of his bankruptcy——"

"His what?" cried Victoria, who had heard as yet nothing of the City disaster.

"His bankruptcy. Mr. Cassilis is ruined."

"Ruined! Mr. Cassilis!"

She was startled out of herself.

Ruined! The thought of such disaster had never once crossed her brains. Ruined! That Colossus of wealth—the man whom she married for his money, while secretly she despised his power of accumulating money!

"He is ruined, Mrs. Cassilis, and hopelessly. I have read certain papers which he put into my hands this morning. It is clear to me that his mind has been for some weeks agitated by certain anonymous letters which came to him every day, and accused you—pardon me, Mrs. Cassilis—accused you of—infidelity. The letters state that there is a secret of some kind connected with your former acquaintance with Mr. Colquhoun; that you have been lately in the habit of receiving him or meeting him every day; that you were in his chambers one evening when Mr. Cassilis called; with other particulars extremely calculated to excite jealousy and suspicion. Lastly, he was sent by the writer to Twickenham. The rest, I believe you know."

She made no reply.

"There can be no doubt, not the least doubt, that had your husband's mind been untroubled, this would never have happened. The disaster is due to his jealousy."

"I could kill her!" said Mrs. Cassilis, clenching her fist. "I could kill her!"

"Kill whom?"

"The woman who wrote those letters. It was a woman. No man could have done such a thing. A woman's trick. Go on."

"There is nothing more to say. How far other people are involved with your husband, I cannot tell. I am going now into the City to find out if I can. Your wild words, Mrs. Cassilis, and your unguarded conduct, have brought about misfortunes on which you little calculated. But I am not here to reproach you."

"You are my husband's man of business, I suppose," she replied coldly—"a paid servant of his. What you say has no importance, nor what you think. What did Lawrence bid you tell me?"

Joseph Jagenal's face clouded for a moment. But what was the good of feeling resentment with such a woman, and in such a miserable business?

"You have two courses open to you," he went on. "You may, by repeating the confession you made in the hearing of Mr. Cassilis, draw upon yourself such punishment as the Law, provided the confession be true, can inflict. That will be a grievous thing to you. It will drive you out of society, and brand you as a criminal; it will lock you up for two years in prison; it will leave a stigma never to be forgotten or obliterated; it means ruin far, far worse than what you have brought on Mr. Cassilis. On the other hand, you may keep silence. This at least will secure the legitimacy of your boy, and will keep for you the amount settled on you at your marriage. But you may choose. If the statement you made is true, of course I can be no party to compounding a felony——"

"And Lawrence?" she interposed. "What does Lawrence say?"

"In any case Mr. Colquhoun will leave England at once."

"He will marry that Phillis girl? You may tell him," she hissed out, "that I will do anything and suffer anything rather than consent to his marrying her, or any one else."

"Mr. Colquhoun informs me further," pursued the crafty lawyer, "that, for some reason only known to himself, he will never marry during the life of a certain person. Phillis Fleming will probably marry the Honourable Mr. Ronald Dunquerque."

She buried her head in her hands, not to hide any emotion, for there was none to hide, but to think. Presently she rose, and said, "Take me to—my husband, if you please."

Joseph Jagenal, as a lawyer, is tolerably well versed in such wickedness and deceptions as the human heart is capable of. At the same time, he acknowledges to himself that the speech made by Victoria Cassilis to her husband, and the manner in which it was delivered, surpassed anything he had ever experienced or conceived.

Gabriel Cassilis was sitting in an arm-chair near his table. In his arms was his infant son, a child of a year old, for whose amusement he was dangling a bunch of keys. The nurse was standing beside him.

When his wife opened the door he looked up, and there crossed his face a sudden expression of such repulsion, indignation, and horror, that the lawyer fairly expected the lady to give way altogether. But she did not. Then Mrs. Cassilis motioned the nurse to leave them, and Victoria said what she had come to say. She stood at the table, in the attitude of one who commands respect rather than one who entreats pardon. Her accentuation was precise, and her words as carefully chosen as if she had written them down first. But her husband held his eyes down, as if afraid of meeting her gaze. You would have called him a culprit waiting for reproof and punishment.

"I learn to-day for the first time that you have suffered from certain attacks made upon me by an anonymous writer; I learn also for the first time, and to my great regret, that you have suffered in fortune as well as in health. I have myself been too ill in mind and body to be told anything. I am come to say at once that I am sorry if any rash words of mine have given you pain, or any foolish actions of mine have given you reason for jealousy. The exact truth is that Lawrence Colquhoun and I were once engaged. The breaking off of that engagement caused me at the time the greatest unhappiness. I resolved then that he should never be engaged to any other girl if I could prevent it by any means in my power. My whole action of late, which appeared to you as if I was running after an old lover, was the prevention of his engagement, which I determined to break off, with Phillis Fleming. In the heat of my passion I used words which were not true. They occurred to me at the moment. I said he was my husband. I meant to have said my promised husband. You now know, Mr. Cassilis, the whole secret. I am deeply humiliated in having to confess my revengeful spirit. I am punished in your affliction."

Always herself; always her own punishment.

"We can henceforth, I presume, Mr. Cassilis, resume our old manner of life."

Mr. Cassilis made no answer, but he patted the head of his child, and Joseph Jagenal saw the tears running down his cheeks. For he knew that the woman lied to him.

"For the sake of the boy, Mr. Cassilis," the lawyer pleaded, "let things go on as before."

He made no sign.

"Will you let me say something for you in the interests of the child?"

He nodded.

"Then, Mrs. Cassilis, your husband consents that there shall be no separation and no scandal. But it will be advisable for you both that there shall be as little intercourse as possible. Your husband will breakfast and dine by himself, and occupy his own apartments. You are free, provided you live in the same house, and keep up appearances, to do whatever you please. But you will not obtrude your presence upon your husband."

Mr. Cassilis nodded again. Then he sought his dictionary, and hunted for a word. It was the word he had first found, and was "Silence."

"Yes; you will also observe strict silence on what has passed at Twickenham, here or elsewhere. Should that silence not be observed, the advisers of Mr. Cassilis will recommend such legal measures as may be necessary."

Again Gabriel Cassilis nodded. He had not once looked up at his wife since that first gaze, in which he concentrated the hatred and loathing of his speechless soul.

"Is that all?" asked Victoria Cassilis. "Or have we more arrangements?"

"That is all, madam," said Joseph, opening the door with great ceremony.

She went away as she had come, with cold haughtiness. Nothing seemed to touch her; not her husband's misery; not his ruin; not the sight of her child. One thing only pleased her. Lawrence Colquhoun would not marry during her lifetime. Bah! she would live a hundred years, and he should never marry at all.

In her own room was her maid.

"Tomlinson," said Mrs. Cassilis—in spite of her outward calm, her nerves were strung to the utmost, and she felt that she must speak to some one—"Tomlinson, if a woman wrote anonymous letters about you, if those letters brought misery and misfortune, what would you do to that woman?"

"I do not know, ma'am," said Tomlinson, whose cheeks grew white.

"I will kill her, Tomlinson! I will kill her! I will get those letters and prove the handwriting, and find that woman out. I will devote my life to it, and I will have no mercy on her when I have found her. I will kill her—somehow—by poison—by stabbing—somehow. Don't tremble, woman; I don't mean you. And Tomlinson, forget what I have said."

Tomlinson could not forget. She tottered from the room, trembling in every limb.

The wretched maid had her revenge. In full and overflowing measure. And yet she was not satisfied. The exasperating thing about revenge is that it never does satisfy, but leaves you at the end as angry as at the beginning. Your enemy is crushed; you have seen him tied to a stake, as is the pleasant wont of the Red Indian, and stick arrows, knives, and red-hot things into him. These hurt so much that he is glad to die. But he is dead, and you can do no more to him. And it seems a pity, because if you had kept him alive, you might have thought of other and more dreadful ways of revenge. These doubts will occur to the most revenge-satiated Christian, and they lead to self-reproach. After all, one might just as well forgive a fellow at once.

Mrs. Cassilis was a selfish and heartless woman. All the harm that was done to her was the loss of her great wealth. And what had her husband done to Tomlinson that he should be stricken? And what had others done who were involved with him in the great disaster?

Tomlinson was so terrified, however, by the look which crossed her mistress's face, that she went away that very evening; pretended to have received a telegram from Liverpool; when she got there wrote for boxes and wages, with a letter in somebody else's writing, for a reason, to her mistress, and then went to America, where she had relations. She lives now in a city of the Western States, where her brother keeps a store. She is a leader in her religious circle; and I think that if she were to see Victoria Cassilis by any accident in the streets of that city, she would fly again, and to the farthest corners of the earth.

So much for revenge; and I do hope that Tomlinson's example will be laid to heart, and pondered by other ladies'-maids whose mistresses are selfish and sharp-tempered.