IV


Closing the door behind his departing guests, Guion stood for a minute,
with his hand still on the knob, pressing his forehead against the
woodwork. He listened to the sound of the carriage-wheels die away and
to the crunching tread of the two men down the avenue.

"The last Guion has received the last guest at Tory Hill," he said to
himself. "That's all over--all over and done with. Now!"

It was the hour to which he had been looking forward, first as an
impossibility, then as a danger, and at last as an expectation, ever
since the day, now some years ago, when he began to fear that he might
not be able to restore all the money he had "borrowed" from the
properties in his trust. Having descried it from a long way off, he knew
that with reasonable luck it could not overtake him soon. There were
many chances, indeed, that it might never overtake him at all. Times
might change; business might improve; he might come in for the money he
expected from his old Aunt de Melcourt; he might die. If none of these
things happened, there were still ways and means by which he might make
money in big strokes and "square himself" without any one ever being
the wiser. He had known of cases, or, at least, he had suspected them,
in which men in precisely his position had averted by daring play the
deadliest peril and gone down into honored graves. Fortune had generally
favored him hitherto, and probably would favor him again.