"accidentally shot while cleaning the weapon."

The real tragedy was that so good a career as the son's should have come
to so untimely an end in so good a collegiate world as Yale. He stood
well in his class, he had played right tackle for two seasons and was
heir apparent to the captaincy; he was well beloved and would have
received an election to a senior society in the spring. But the solid
ground being withdrawn from under his feet--in other words, his
allowance from his father--he left amid universal regret, and found
himself a very small person in a very great city; worse, a youth who had
always had everything, loved pleasure, lights, games, and color, and who
now had no visible means of support.

[Illustration: She wished that she might die, or, infinitely better,
that she had never been born.]

Friends found him a position in Wall Street. Being young, attractive,
a good "mixer," not in the least shy, he was given a handsome
"entertaining" allowance and told to bring in business. So he
foregathered with out-of-town magnates, made the city a pleasant,
familiar place to them, and brought much of their money into the firm's
office. When Barbara was kind he despised his anomalous position and
strove to free himself from it; but even the best man has to live.

And during those intervals when he thought he could do without her,
Wilmot sank deeper and deeper into methods of self-advancement which, if
not actually base and culpable, at least smirched the finer qualities of
his nature, and hardened his heart.

If the father's heritage, drink and women, were spared him, or at least