This it was which had wrung from the Master Builder the foregoing confession.
"Your poor mother was partly right, and partly wrong.

I might have been a rich man, I might be a rich man even now--terrible as is the state of trade in this stricken city--had it not been that she would have me adventure beyond my means in her haste to see me wealthy before my fellows.

And the end of it is that I stand here today a ruined man!" Gertrude held in her arms a little child, over whom she bent from time to time to assure herself that it slept.

Her face had grown pale and thin during her long confinement between the walls of this house; yet it was a happier and more contented face than it had been wont to be in the days when she lived in luxurious idleness at her mother's side.

She looked many years older than she had done then, but there was a beauty and sweet serenity about her appearance now which had not been visible in the days of old.
"What has happened during this sad time to ruin you, dear father ?" asked Gertrude gently, guessing that it would ease his heart to talk of his troubles.