For a higher womanly ideal reigned in his lonely bosom.
Back, back to the speaking silence of his lonely rooms he wandered, to gaze through the smoke wreaths upon that picture which had so strangely brought Irma Gluyas into his life.

Gloomily recalling the past, he went over all the brief memories of his boyhood, and tried to recall his stern father's few confidences, or picture to himself the mother whom he had never known.

All was a gray blank of toiling days and carking cares.

And Worthington had robbed him and made him eat the bread of dependence.
He lived now only to wreak a vengeance upon the man who had shared his father's early speculations and deserted him in his time of need.
The ruin of Everett Clayton was now explained.

And but one gracious memory lingered with him to lighten the gloom of his dependent boyhood.
Golden-haired Alice Worthington, the child-angel of the house, the frank girlish little playmate, the slim, shy school girl, the "Little Sister" of his striving college days.