Then he could have shifted the responsibility.
Just here, oddly enough, he began to think of Felix--that cold-blooded, unimaginative man, who knew absolutely nothing about how to treat a woman, and, for that matter, knew nothing about anything else in so far as the practical side of life was concerned.

The fool--here his brow knit--had not only broken up the final deal, in which everything had been fixed with Mullhallsen, the German banker, for an additional loan, but he had unearthed and compared certain certificates, in his fight to protect an obstinate old father.

Worse still, he had taken himself off to Australia to starve, instead of saving what he could out of the wreck.

Had he only listened to advice, the whole catastrophe might have been averted.
And this fool would have ruined his wife as well, had not he--Dalton--stepped in and saved her from burying herself in the wilderness.
As the memory of the scene with Felix when the stock-book was unearthed passed through his mind, his hand instinctively sought the bulge in his coat-pocket.

He must get rid of it and at once.