“Laura is terribly distressed,” Page went on. “I can see that. They used to spend all their evenings together in the library, and Laura would read aloud to him. But now he comes home so tired that sometimes he goes to bed at nine o’clock, and Laura sits there alone reading till eleven and twelve. But she’s afraid, too, of the effect upon him. He’s getting so absorbed. He don’t care for literature now as he did once, or was beginning to when Laura used to read to him; and he never thinks of his Sunday school. And then, too, if you’re to believe Mr. Cressler, there’s a chance that he may lose if he is speculating again.”

But Landry stoutly protested: