He spoke in emphatic tones, and several of the passing crowd turned their heads to see who it was who so loudly published the unfortunate state of his financial affairs. Sidney was quick to realise the attention he was attracting, and lowered his voice to a more confidential pitch. Neither he nor his companion specially remarked one among those who glanced up at them on hearing the outspoken words, a small spare man with a clean-shaven face and brown hair fading to a premature greyness. Nor if they had done so would either of them have recognised in this correctly dressed, spick and span Londoner, whose well-fitting morning coat and patent leather boots so exactly resembled those worn by Sidney himself and nearly every smart young man to be met with in the Park that day, the well-known private detective, Mr. Gimblet, the man most dreaded by the criminal class of the entire kingdom.

Walking at a more rapid pace than they, he was in the act of overtaking the couple as they strolled along, when something in Sidney’s voice, a note of despairing recklessness more than the words themselves that he uttered, aroused his interest and wakened his ever ready curiosity. He continued to walk on without slackening his speed, and did not look back until he had advanced some fifty yards. Then he hesitated, loitered a moment, and finally sat down on one of the green chairs, which stood conveniently unoccupied, just before Sidney and Barbara strolled unconcernedly by.

Before they had passed, Gimblet had made a quick survey of the young man’s face, on which signs of worry and anxiety were very plainly to be noted.

“I wonder who it is,” he thought; and continued, when they had gone on, to gaze meditatively after the young people.

In his turn he failed to observe two ladies who came up in the opposite direction to that in which his head was turned. Mrs. Vanderstein observed his intent expression as she approached, and following the direction of his eyes murmured to her friend:

“Do you see that man staring at Barbara? He looks quite moonstruck. She attracts a great deal of attention. Such a dear girl, I don’t know what I should do without her.”

“You are so good to her,” murmured her companion. “The question is rather, what would she do without you? But she is certainly an attractive young person, especially to men. I wonder that you are not afraid to let that delightful nephew of yours see so much of her.”

To Barbara, walking mechanically by Sidney’s side, it seemed suddenly as if some strange darkness hung over the face of nature. The lightness of heart with which she had gone forth out of the house, the high spirits natural to her that constituted the only legacy of any value which she had inherited from her father, deserted her now to make place for distress on the young man’s account. Nor was it only at the thought of the trouble that had fallen on him that she recoiled horror-struck and that the sunlight took on a quality of gloom, which made the present hour such a dismal one and those of the future to appear encircled in a dusk that deepened, as it receded, till it merged into that utter obscurity over whose boundaries Joe seemed already to be slipping and vanishing. It was the effect of his disaster on her own life that chiefly terrified and shocked her. What would she do without the only man friend of anything like her own age whom she knew in London and whose tastes so much resembled her own? She would hear no more sporting gossip, be cut off from her one remaining link with the racing world. What would she do without him if he disappeared as he threatened? What would she do without the only person in the world she cared to see? The only person in the world she cared for… The knowledge came to her suddenly like a revelation and she stumbled for a moment in her walk as she realised with a flash of self-comprehension the full meaning of her dread.

In that instant she saw and realised that to lose Joe Sidney would be, for her, to lose all.

He, occupied in a recital of his troubles, noticed nothing beyond his own almost unconscious relief in speaking at length of the worries he had for so long kept to himself. It was a comfort to have so sympathetic a listener.

Still, not much comfort could be extracted even from that, with the crisis in his life so real and so near at hand, and he was soon repeating his earlier assertions that it was no use talking, and that there was no hope for him of anything but absolute ruin.

“Your aunt. She must, oh, she must help you!” Barbara heard herself saying again.

Again Sidney shook his head.

“You don’t understand her. She will act in accordance with her ideas. We Jews – ”

“You are not a Jew!” Her voice was indignant.

“My mother was a Jewess. You don’t suppose I am ashamed of it? We Jews have stronger convictions – opinions – principles – call them what you like – than Christians are in the habit of hampering themselves with. We are more apt, I should say, to live up to our theories. My aunt looks on gambling as the most deadly of sins. Where you or I perceive a green track and a few bookies, she sees, I do believe, a personage with horns and a tail, brandishing a pitchfork. I’m not at all sure she isn’t right. I am at least quite sure that if I could get out of this mess I’d never go near a race-course or have so much as a look at the odds again as long as I lived. It’s not much use saying that now, is it? But believe me, help from Aunt Ruth is out of the question. You may scratch it. This is the end of all for me. I shall just have to go. Drop out, as many better men have had to do before me.”

“Oh don’t talk like that,” cried Barbara. She had pulled herself together, and was thinking clearly and rapidly. “Listen to me. If you can’t go to Mrs. Vanderstein with the truth, can’t you go to her with” – she hesitated – “something else?”

“A lie,” said Joe bluntly. “I don’t wonder you think I’d not be above a lie if it could save me. But can you suggest one with which I could go to her and ask for £10,000? If you can, let’s hear it, for goodness’ sake. But of course you can’t. She’s not an absolute fool!” He laughed again, a short, hard laugh.

“You don’t know Mrs. Vanderstein as well as I do, though you are a relation,” said Barbara. “She has weak points, you know. At least she has one weakness. I wonder if you know what it is?”

They had come to the Corner and paused by the rails. Instinctively Barbara turned about, looking to see if Mrs. Vanderstein were within earshot.

“Why, look at her now,” she cried.

Sidney, too, turned, and followed the direction of her gaze.

His aunt and her friend had reached a point some fifty yards behind them. Mrs. Vanderstein’s face was radiant. A rosy colour dyed her cheeks. Her eyes sparkled, when for a moment she lifted them and glanced in the direction of the roadway. But for the most part they seemed to be modestly cast down and Mrs. Vanderstein appeared interested solely in the toes of her shoes; these, though of the most pleasing aspect, did not entirely justify the delight the lady seemed to feel in them. She may, perhaps, have been wondering whether or no they touched the ground, for so lightly did she tread that a mere spectator might have felt very grave doubts on the subject. She looked, indeed, to be walking upon air. Even Sidney, unobservant as he commonly was of the expressions of people to whom he was not at the moment talking, could not help noticing her unusual demeanour. Indeed she looked the incarnation of happiness.

“What’s the matter with her?” he asked, turning again to the girl beside him.

For answer she made a movement of her hand towards the road.

“Do you see that?” she inquired.

There was very little traffic in the Park on that Sunday evening. A motor or two rolled through, but they were few and far between. Joe saw nothing remarkable or that could, to his thinking, in any way account for his aunt’s strange looks. One carriage only was driving by, a barouche occupied by an elderly lady and three foreign-looking men. There was nothing about them to attract attention.

“What in the world is there to see?” he said, in bewilderment.

“In that carriage are Prince Felipe of Targona and his mother,” said Barbara, “and Mrs. Vanderstein gets as excited as that whenever she sees any kind of a Royal personage. I don’t think,” she added truthfully, “that I ever saw her show it quite so plainly, but you can see the effect they have on her. Royalty is what really interests her most in life. You wouldn’t believe how much she is thrilled by it. It is an infatuation, almost a craze.”

“I had no notion she was like that,” said Joe, with an air of some disgust. “I should never have thought she was such a frightful snob.”

“I don’t think it is snobbishness with Mrs. Vanderstein,” said Barbara. “It’s more a sort of romanticness. But I don’t suppose you understand. The point is that there’s nothing she wouldn’t do to meet any kind of a little princeling. And if she once met him, there’s nothing he could ask she wouldn’t give. After all,” she went on in an argumentative tone, “she ought not to let you be ruined. I am sure Mr. Vanderstein never would have. And £10,000 is really so little to her. Why, her pearls alone are worth far more. What does a sum like that matter? It’s only four or five hundred a year. She wouldn’t miss it a bit.”

“I daresay,” said Sidney, “but I don’t see what good that does me.”

“Have you got a friend you can trust who would stretch a point to help you?”

“Not a decimal point as far as cash is concerned. In other ways, I daresay I have got one or two. They’d help me all right, poor chaps, if they’d got any money themselves.”

“It’s not money. I mean some one who would take a little trouble.”

“Oh yes, I think I can raise one of that sort. For that matter,” said Sidney, “if you don’t mind my calling you a friend, I think no one could want a better one. It’s no end good of you to be so sympathetic and let me bore you with my rotten affairs.”

The girl turned away her face.

“Of course I am a friend,” she said, “but you will want a man, if my idea is any good. Now listen, I have got a plan.”

Barbara hesitated. She was very conscious that the idea which had come to her was not one which would commend itself to Joe. A few hours before she would have scornfully rejected the suggestion that she herself could ever be brought to tolerate such an expedient, but now everything was changed and all her convictions of right and wrong were shaken and tottering, if not entirely swept aside by the fear of the imminent danger to the man she loved. Her one feeling now was that at any cost the peril must be averted, and the question of the moment was how to represent her design in such terms as would prevail on him to see in it a path that a man might conceivably follow and yet retain some remnant of self-esteem.

Very carefully, choosing her words with deliberation, she disclosed to Sidney the plan that to her seemed to offer the only chance of setting his affairs in order. As she expected, he refused at first to entertain the idea at all; undismayed, she returned to the attack and persisted, with Jesuitical reasonings and syllogisms, in showing him that in the method she proposed lay his only hope of obtaining the necessary money. Very slowly and reluctantly he allowed himself to be persuaded. No one could have listened for half an hour to Barbara’s cajolements without giving way.

At the first sign of his weakening she redoubled her efforts, and as she talked, refusing to allow herself to be discouraged by Joe’s objections and the difficulties he pointed out, he gradually succumbed to her wheedling, and once he had thrust his scruples into the background became nearly as enthusiastic as she was herself.

Before they parted the plan was worked out in every point. It remained but to take the faithful necessary friend of Joe’s into their confidence. This, Joe told her, had better be a subaltern in his regiment, by name Baines, luckily in London at the present moment.

“As long,” he said with a return to former doubts, “as old Baines is equal to the job. There’s not much he’d stick at, though.”

“Yes,” said Barbara, and was silent a minute during which the difficulties of carrying out her plan successfully seemed to swarm around her with quite a new vigour. “If anything should turn up,” she faltered, “to make this idea impossible, you will try telling Mrs. Vanderstein the truth, won’t you? It is a chance, after all.”

“Well, it can’t make things worse, I suppose,” he agreed. “I hope it won’t come to that. I don’t think it will now; but if it does, I promise, if it pleases you, that I will make a clean breast of it to her.”

“Thank you,” she murmured; and then as they turned, “there she is now, making signs that we should go back.”