was, in short, quite clear that he was suspected of an intention to run
away without paying his bill--perhaps even of joining his "confederate,"
Mr. John Maitland.

The only thing that comforted Richard was the conviction that he should
have a remittance from his father in a few hours; but nothing of the
sort, not even a telegram, arrived. Day after day went by, and the
young fellow was in despair; he felt like a pariah, for he had been
so occupied with the tables that he had made no friends; and his few
acquaintances looked askance at him, as being under a cloud, with the
precise nature of which they were unacquainted. Friendless and penniless
in a foreign land, his spirit was utterly broken, and he began
to understand what a fool he had made of himself; especially how
ungratefully he had behaved to his father, without whom it was not so
easy to "get on," it appeared, as he had imagined. He saw, too, the evil
of his conduct in having thrust a temptation in the way of honest John
too great to be resisted. The police could hear no news of him, and,
indeed, seemed very incredulous with respect to Richard's account of the
matter.

On the fourth day Richard received a letter from his father of the
gravest kind, though expressed in the most affectionate terms. He hardly
alluded to the immediate misfortune that had happened to him, but spoke
of the anxiety and alarm which his conduct had caused his mother
and himself. "I enclose you a check," he wrote, "just sufficient to
comfortably bring you home and pay your hotel bill, and exceedingly
regret that I cannot trust my son with more--lest he should risk it in
a way that gives his mother and myself more distress of mind than I can
express."