Explore "At Love's Cost" by Charles Garvice on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
At noon the following day there was a large meeting at Gloucester House. There gathered the Beltons, Baron Wirsch, Griffenberg, and the titled and untitled folk who had been concerned in Sir Stephen Orme's big scheme. And they were all gloomy and in a bad temper; for all of them had lost money and some of them were well-nigh ruined by the collapse of the company which was to have made their fortunes. They came before noon, the appointed hour, and talked, sometimes in undertones, but not seldom in loud and complaining voices. By one and all the dead man was blamed for the ruin in which he had involved them.
They had left the whole thing in his hands: he ought to have foreseen, ought to have taken proper precautions. They had been--well, if not duped and deceived, the victims of his criminal sanguineness and carelessness.