"As a matter of fact, your mother and sister will lose nothing.

You undertook to pay them a minimum of three per cent.

on their money, and that you can do; I guarantee you that, in any case." Will mused.

If indeed it were possible to avoid the disclosure--?
But that would involve much lying, a thing, even in a good cause, little to his taste.

Still, when he thought of his mother's weak health, and how she might be affected by the news of this catastrophe, he began seriously to ponder the practicability of well-meaning deception.