I'm sorry--!"

"You're not!"--retorted Gwent--"So don't pretend. No one is sorry
for anybody else nowadays. There's no time. And no inclination. Jack
was always a fool--perhaps he's best out of it. I've just seen him--
dead. He's better-looking so than when alive."

She sprang up from her rocking chair in a blaze of indignation.

"You are brutal!" she exclaimed, with a half sob--"Positively
brutal!"

"Not at all!" he answered, composedly--"Only commonplace. It is you
advanced women that are brutal,--not we left-behind men. Jack was a
fool, I say--he staked the whole of his game on Morgana Royal, and
he lost. That was the last straw. If he could have married her he
would have cleared all his debts over and over--and that's what he
had hoped for. The disappointment was too much for him."

"But--didn't he LOVE her?" Lydia Herbert put the question almost
imperatively.

Mr. Sam Gwent raised his eyebrows quizzically. "I guess you came out
of the Middle Ages!" he observed--"What's 'love'? Did you ever know
a woman with millions of money who got 'loved'? Not a bit of it! Her
MONEY is loved--but not herself. She's the encumbrance to the cash."

"Then--then--you mean to tell me Jack was only after the money--?"

"What else should he be after? The woman? There are thousands of