Ovington's Bank by Stanley J. Weyman — Read

If the news which Arthur had conveyed to the bank on that Monday morning had been much to Clement, it had been more to his father. It had brought to Ovington immense relief at the moment when he had least reason to expect it. The banker had not hidden the position from those who must needs work with him; but even to them he had not imparted the full measure of his fears, much less the extent of the suffering which those fears occasioned him. The anxiety that kept him sleepless, the calculations that tormented his pillow, the regret with which he reviewed the past, the responsibility for the losses of others that depressed him-he had kept these things to himself, or at most had dropped but a hint of them to his beloved Betty.

But they had been very real to him and very terrible. The spectre of bankruptcy-with all the horror which it connoted for the mercantile mind-had loomed before him for weeks past, had haunted and menaced him; and its sudden exorcism on this Monday morning meant a relief which he dared not put into words to others and shrank from admitting even to himself. He who had held his head so high-no longer need he anticipate the moment when he would be condemned as a reckless adventurer, whose fall had been as rapid as his rise, and whom the wiseacres of Aldersbury had doomed to failure from the first! That had been the bitterest drop in his cup, and to know that he need not drain it, was indeed a blessed respite.