One day, feeling very contented and in good spirits, she had gone to see
her father with an impulse to tell him how well she was getting on.
Directly the door was opened by the untidy servant Dulcie felt that
something had happened, that some blow had fallen. Everything looked
different. She found her father in his den surrounded by papers, his
appearance and manner so altered that the first thing she said was:
'Oh, papa! what's the matter?'
Her father looked up. At his expression she flew to him and threw her
arms round him. Then, of course, he broke down. Strange that with all
women and most men it is only genuine sympathy that makes them give way.
With a cool man of the world, or with a hard, cold, heartless daughter
who had reproached him, Mr Clay would have been as casual as an
undergraduate.
At her sweetness he lost his self-control, and then he told her
everything.
* * * * *
It was a short, commonplace, second-rate story, quite trivial and
middle-class, and _how_ tragic! He had gambled, played cards, lost, then
fallen back on the resource of the ill-judged and independent-minded--gone
to the professional lenders.
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