The Last Woman

"Certainly."

"Well, then, you know the situation, don't you?"

"I am not quite sure as to that," she replied, meditatively. "You have been somewhat ambiguous, and certainly quite enigmatical in your statement. Am I to gather from what you have told me that you are really facing failure?"

"God knows I have made it plain enough," was the quick response and Langdon pushed his chair away from the table, stretched his legs out straight in front of him, and thrust his hands deep into his trousers-pockets.

"I had not supposed it possible for you to face failure," said Patricia, with her eyes fixed upon her father's mask-like face; "but if it is so, won't you tell me more about it?"

"It all came about through those infernal bonds that I have just described to you. The men who were to go into the deal with me withdrew at the last moment; I have already explained that fully to you, and now, this Saturday afternoon, I find myself in a position such as I have never faced before--where there are demands upon me which I cannot meet; and those demands, Patricia, must be met, somehow, at ten o'clock on Monday morning, or Stephen Langdon must go to the wall."

"It amazes me," she said, speaking more to herself than to him; and she tapped lightly with her gloved fingers upon the table before her. "It amazes me more than I can say. I thought myself closely familiar with all the ins and outs of your business, dad, and I find now that I knew nothing about it at all."

"You have never known very much about it," he replied, with a half-laugh, but with a kindly smile, which changed his iron face wondrously, and which was reflected by a softened expression in his daughter's eyes.

"Is there no one to come to your aid?" she asked him.

"No, Patricia, there is no one to whom I could apply without betraying my condition and situation, and that would be fatal. Such a course would be equivalent to going broke; for when once a man loses his credit, even for an instant, in Wall Street, it is lost forever, never to be regained. People will tell you that there are exceptions to this, but I have been fifty years among the bulls and bears, and wolves, too, and I know better. When a man who occupies the position that I have held, and hold now, goes to the wall, it is the end."