The colonel again threw himself into his chair, stretched out his slender, well-turned legs, crooked one of his russet-leather riding-boots to be sure the spurs were still in place, and said slowly—­rather absently, as if the subject did not greatly interest him: 

“Patapsco failed and St. George a beggar, eh?—­Too bad!—­too bad!” Then some disturbing suspicions must have entered his head, for he roused himself, looked at Gorsuch keenly, and asked in a searching tone:  “And you came over full tilt, John, to tell me this?”

“I thought you might help.  St. George needs all the friends he’s got if this is true—­and it looks to me as if it was,” answered Gorsuch in a casual way.

Rutter relaxed his gaze and resumed his position.  Had his suspicions been correct that Gorsuch’s interest in Harry was greater than his interest in the bank’s failure, he would have resented it even from John Gorsuch.

Disarmed by the cool, unflinching gaze of his man of business, his mind again took up in review all the incidents connected with St. George and his son, and what part each had played in them.

That Temple—­good friend as he had always been—­had thwarted him in every attempt to bring about a reconciliation between himself and Harry, had been apparent from the very beginning of the difficulty.  Even the affair at the club showed it.  This would have ended quite differently—­and he had fully intended it should—­had not St. George, with his cursed officiousness, interfered with his plans.  For what he had really proposed to himself to do, on that spring morning when he had rolled up to the club in his coach, was to mount the steps, ignore his son at first, if he should run up against him—­(and he had selected the very hour when he hoped he would run up against him)—­and then, when the boy broke down, as he surely must, to forgive him like a gentleman and a Rutter, and this, too, before everybody.  Seymour would see it—­Kate would hear of it, and the honor of the Rutters remain unblemished.  Moreover, this would silence once and for all those gabblers who had undertaken to criticise him for what they called his inhumanity in banishing this only son when he was only trying to bring up that child in the way he should go.  Matters seemed to be coming his way.  The failure of the Patapsco might be his opportunity.  St. George would be at his wits’ end; Harry would be forced to choose between the sidewalk and Moorlands, and the old life would go on as before.

All these thoughts coursed through his mind as he leaned back in his chair, his lips tight set, the jaw firm and determined—­only the lids quivering as he mastered the tears that crept to their edges.  Now and then, in his mental absorption, he would absently cross his legs only to straighten them out again, his state of mind an open book to Gorsuch, who had followed the same line of reasoning and who had brought the news himself that he might the better watch its effect.