August morning, when it was on the verge of dissolution. A telegram
brought to Sir Robert Mainwaring had even then as completely shattered
and disintegrated Oldenhurst, in all it was and all it meant, as if the
brown-paper envelope had been itself charged with the electric fluid.

Sir Robert Mainwaring, whose family had for three centuries possessed
Oldenhurst, had received the news of his financial ruin; and the vast
pile which had survived the repeated invasion of superstition, force,
intrigue, and even progress, had succumbed to a foe its founders and
proprietors had loftily ignored and left to Jews and traders. The
acquisition of money, except by despoilment, gift, royal favor, or
inheritance, had been unknown at Oldenhurst. The present degenerate
custodian of its fortunes, staggering under the weight of its
sentimental mortmain already alluded to, had speculated in order to
keep up its material strength, that was gradually shrinking through
impoverished land and the ruined trade it had despised. He had invested
largely in California mines, and was the chief shareholder in a San
Francisco Bank. But the mines had proved worthless, the Bank had that
morning suspended payment, owing to the failure of a large land and
timber company on the Sierras which it had imprudently "carried."
The spark which had demolished Oldenhurst had been fired from the new
telegraph-station in the hotel above the great Sierran canyon.

There was a large house-party at Oldenhurst that morning. But it had
been a part of the history of the Mainwarings to accept defeat gallantly
and as became their blood. Sir Percival,--the second gentleman on the
left as you entered the library,--unhorsed, dying on a distant moor,
with a handful of followers, abandoned by a charming Prince and a
miserable cause, was scarcely a greater hero than this ruined but
undaunted gentleman of eighty, entering the breakfast-room a few