other money? It would be much simpler if we knew just how we stood."

The Captain seemed to have a painfully clear idea of how he stood.
"Your mother," he remarked, with apparent irrelevance, "is such an
unreasonable woman; if she were like you--if she saw things sensibly.
But she won't, she'll make a fuss; she will entirely overlook the fact
that it is my own money that I have lost."

"I am afraid she will," Julia agreed. "Will you tell me if you lost
any one else's money as well?"

"Oh, a trifle," the Captain said; "nothing to speak of yesterday; I
have borrowed a little now and again, at cards and so on; a trifling
accommodation."

"From whom?"

"Rawson-Clew."

Julia nodded; this was bad, but it might have been worse. Mr.
Rawson-Clew was not a personal friend of the Polkingtons, and he was
not a man in an inferior position who might presume upon his loan to
the Captain to establish a friendly footing. On the contrary, he was
in a superior position, so much so that for a moment Julia was at a
loss to understand how he came to accommodate her father. Then she
recalled his face--he had been pointed out to her--he looked a
good-natured fool; probably he had met the Captain somewhere and been
sorry for him, or perhaps he did not like to say "no." In any case he
had lent the money and, so Julia fancied, would have to wait a very
long time before he saw it again. She dismissed the young man from her