What comes with a shock is admitted with difficulty.

But what will you say to the end of his career?
It was of course sensational and tolerably sudden.

It began with the Orb Deposit Bank.

Under the name of that institution de Barral with the frantic obstinacy of an unimaginative man had been financing an Indian prince who was prosecuting a claim for immense sums of money against the government.

It was an enormous number of scores of lakhs--a miserable remnant of his ancestors' treasures--that sort of thing.