This, too, accounts for the vim and suddenness of the final recoil attending the final collapse--a recoil which smashed everything and everybody within its reach.
There were "words," of course, between Dalton and some of his victims.
There always are "words" when the ball bounces back and you catch it full in the eye.

And for salves and soothing plasters there were the customary explanations regarding the state of the market, the tightness of money, the non-arrival of important details, the delaying of despatches owing to a break in the cable, together with offers of heavy discounts, and increased allotments of stock for renewed subscriptions.
But the end came, just as it always does.
And so did the aftermath, as was shown by the advertisements in the auction columns of the daily papers and the motley mob of hungry, perspiring dealers, pawing over the household gods; and, more disastrous still, because of its rarity, Felix's brave fight to save his father's name, the whole struggle ending in his own ruin.
As for the very pretty young woman who had been wearing the hat with blue ribbons, it may be as well to remark that when the milk in the heart of a woman has become slightly curdled, it is to be expected that, under certain exciting influences, the whole will turn sour.

When to this curdling process is added the loss of her child and her fortune, calamities made all the more insupportable by reason of an interview lasting an hour in which her two hot hands were held in those of a sympathetic man of thirty, her cheeks within an inch of his lips, the quickest--in fact, the only way--yes, really the only way, to prevent any further calamity is to put your best gown in your best dressing-case, catch up your jewels, and exchange your husband's roof for that of your father's.

And this is precisely what my lady did do, and there in her father's house she stayed, despite the entreaties of her own and her father's friends.
"And why not ?" she had argued, with flashing eyes: "I am without a shilling of my own, owing to the Quixotic ideas of my husband, who, without thinking of me, has beggared himself to pay his father's debts.
And that, too, just when I need to be comforted most.

He does not care how I suffer; and now that my father has offered me a home, I will lead my own life, surrounded by the few friends who have loved me for myself alone." That the eminent financier--it might be better perhaps to say the LATE eminent financier--was one of those same unselfish beings who had "loved her for herself alone," and that he had, at once and without the delay of an hour, flown to her side followed as a matter of course, as did the gossip, men and women in and about the clubs and drawing-rooms nodding meaningly or hinting behind their hands.
"Rather rough on O'Day," the men had agreed.