“I’m surprised that Temple should select the Patapsco.  It has never got over its last smash of four years ago,” Gorsuch at last remarked.  He did not intend to let the topic drift away from Harry if he could help it.

“I am not surprised, John.  St. George is the best fellow in the world, but he never lets anything work but his heart.  When you get at the bottom of it you will find that he’s backed up the bank because some poor devil of a teller or clerk, or may be some director, is his friend.  That’s enough for St. George, and further than that he never goes.  He’s thrown away two fortunes now—­his grandmother’s, which was small but sound—­and his father’s, which if he had attended to it would have kept him comfortable all his life.”

“You had some words at the club, I heard,” interjected Gorsuch.

“No, he had some words, I had a julep,” and the colonel smiled grimly.

“But you are still on good terms, are you not?”

“I am, but he isn’t.  But that is of no consequence.  No man in his senses would ever get angry with St. George, no matter what he might say or do.  He hasn’t a friend in the world who could be so ill bred.  And as to calling him out—­you would as soon think of challenging your wife.  St. George talks from his heart, never his head.  I have loved him for thirty years and know exactly what I am talking about—­and yet let me tell you, Gorsuch, that with all his qualities—­and he is the finest-bred gentleman I know—­he can come closer to being a natural born fool than any man of his years and position in Kennedy Square.  This treatment of my son—­whom I am trying to bring up a gentleman—­is one proof of it, and this putting all his eggs into one basket—­and that a rotten basket—­is another.”

“Well, then—­if that is your feeling about it, colonel, why not go and see him?  As I have said, he needs all the friends he’s got at a time like this.”  If he could bring the two men together the boy might come home.  Not to be able to wave back to Harry as he dashed past on Spitfire, had been a privation which the whole settlement had felt.  “That is, of course,” he continued, “if St. George Temple would be willing to receive you.  He would be—­wouldn’t he?”

“I don’t know, John—­and I don’t care.  If I should make up my mind to go—­remember, I said ’if’—­I’d go whether he liked it or not.”

He had made up his mind—­had made it up at the precise moment the announcement of the bank’s failure and St. George’s probable ruin had dropped from Gorsuch’s lips—­but none of this must Gorsuch suspect.  He would still be the doge and Virginius; he alone must be the judge of when and how and where he would show leniency.  Generations of Rutters were behind him—­this boy was in the direct line—­connecting the past with the present—­and on Colonel Talbot Rutter of Moorlands, and on no other, rested the responsibility of keeping the glorious name unsmirched.