It is possible that, if his revolver had been lying quite near, the morning John Derringham awoke to the remembrance that he was more or less an engaged man, he would have shot himself, so utterly wretched and debased did he feel.

But no such weapon was there, and he lay in his splendid gilt bed and groaned aloud as he covered his eyes with his hand.
The light hurt him--he was giddy, and his head swam.

Surely, among other things in the half-indistinct nightmare of the preceding evening, he must have had too much champagne.
From the moment, now over a week ago, that he had been allowed to sit up in bed, and more or less distinct thought had come back to him, he had been a prey to hideous anxiety and grief.

Halcyone was gone from him--had been snatched away by Fate, who, with relentless vindictiveness, had filled his cup.

For the first letters that he opened, marked from his lawyers so urgently that they had been given to him before the bandages were off his head, contained the gravest news of his financial position.