Meanwhile, under grey skies, in a gloomy room near Primrose Hill, another young man faced (with dismay) a definite tide in his affairs.
He sat in a shabby dressing-gown before a table covered with papers, sorted now in grim piles of unpaid bills, reading a writ.
Stephen Somerfield stared at it, his weak good-looking face drawn into lines of hopeless disgust.
"It's a deuce of a mess!" So he summed it up. "What an unlucky beggar I am!—I thought it was pretty bad, but this"—he threw down the document—"is the limit!"
For months past he had postponed a thorough survey of his liabilities, with the shallowness of his character, preferring to ignore the worst. Even now, when he found himself hopelessly involved in debt, he could raise no better reason for it than his own "chronic ill-luck!"
W
