The altar fire by A.C. Benson

I have come back to-night from some weary nightmare days with my poor cousin. The thing is as bad as it can be. The business will be acquired by Messrs. F, the next most leading solicitors. With the price they will give, and with the sacrifice of my cousin's savings, and the assets of the firm, the money can just be paid. We shall have some six hundred a year to live upon; my cousin is to enter the office of the F firm as an ordinary clerk. The origin of the disaster is a melancholy one; it was not that he himself might profit, but to increase the income of some clients who had lost money and desired a higher rate of interest for funds left in the hands of the firm. If my cousin had resisted the demand, there would have been some unpleasantness, because the money lost had been invested on his advice; he could not face this, and proceeded to speculate with other money, of which he was trustee, to fill the gap.

Good-nature, imprudence, credulousness, a faulty grasp of the conditions, and not any deliberate dishonesty, have been the cause of his ruin. It is a fearful blow to him, but he is fortunate, perhaps, in being unmarried; I have urged him to try and get employment elsewhere, but he insists upon facing the situation in the place where he is known, with a fantastic idea, which is at the same time noble and chivalrous, of doing penance. Of course he has no prospects whatever; but I am sure of this, that he grieves over my lost inheritance far more than he grieves over his own ruin. His great misery is that some years ago he refused an offer from Messrs. F to amalgamate the two firms.