Philip rose without a word and left the room, but when he was gone it
was his father's turn to hide his face in his hands.

"Oh, God!" he groaned aloud, "to think that all my plans should come
to such an end as this; to think that I am as powerless to prevent
their collapse as a child is to support a falling tree; that the only
power left me is the power of vengeance--vengeance on my own son. I
have lived too long, and the dregs of life are bitter."



CHAPTER IX

Poor Hilda found life in her London lodging anything but cheerful, and
frequently begged Philip to allow her to settle somewhere in the
country. This, however, he refused to do on two grounds: in the first
place, because few country villages would be so convenient for him to
get at as London; and in the second, because he declared that the
great city was the safest hiding-place in the world.

And so Hilda continued perforce to live her lonesome existence, that
was only cheered by her husband's short and uncertain visits. Friends
she had none, nor did she dare to make any. The only person whose
conversation she could rely on to relieve the tedium of the long weeks
was her landlady, Mrs. Jacobs, the widow of a cheesemonger, who had
ruined a fine business by his drinking and other vicious propensities,
and out of a good property had only left his wife the leasehold of a
house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which, fortunately for her, had been
settled upon her at her marriage. Like most people who have seen