to do him justice, he never dreamed of appropriating the profits
anticipated to himself. Though knowing that the bills on which the
moneys had been advanced were merely nominal deposits, he had confidently
calculated on the certainty of success for the speculations to which the
proceeds so obtained were devoted, and he looked forward to the moment
when he might avow what he had done, and justify it by doubling the
capital withdrawn. But to his inconceivable horror, the bill of the
Canal Company was rejected in the Lords; the shares bought at a premium
went down to zero; and to add to his perplexity, the speculator abruptly
disappeared from the town. In this crisis he was summoned to meet his
indignant associates.

The evidence against him was morally damning, if not legally conclusive.
The unhappy man heard all in the silence of despair. Crushed and
bewildered, he attempted no defence. He asked but an hour to sum up the
losses of the bank and his own; they amounted within a few hundreds to
the 10,000 pounds he had brought to the firm, and which, in the absence
of marriage-settlements, was entirely at his own disposal. This sum he
at once resigned to his associates, on condition that they should defray
from it his personal liabilities. The money thus repaid, his partners
naturally relinquished all further inquiry. They were moved by pity for
one so gifted and so fallen,--they even offered him a subordinate but
lucrative situation in the firm in which he had been partner; but
Mainwaring wanted the patience and resolution to work back the redemption
of his name,--perhaps, ultimately, of his fortunes. In the fatal anguish
of his shame and despair, he fled from the town; his flight confirmed
forever the rumours against him,--rumours worse than the reality. It was
long before he even admitted Susan to the knowledge of the obscure refuge
he had sought; there, at length, she joined him. Meanwhile, what did
Lucretia? She sold nearly half of her own fortune, constituted