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never entered her mind to buy anything new.
    In any case she had always thought her home was perfect and complete.
    Now, helplessly, she looked at her stepfather and asked,
    “Where shall we start?”
    He had taken the inventory from the table where he had left it when they went into luncheon. He was turning its pages with a grim expression on his face.
    It was then that Belinda asked with some trepidation,
    “What did you –
buy
with the – money you obtained from Mama’s jewellery?”
    She thought that perhaps her stepfather would be angry at the question.
    Yet somehow she felt she had to know.
    She could not bear to think that the jewels her mother had worn and had been so fond of had been spent on one of her stepfather’s fast friends.
    “I will tell you exactly what I did with it,” her stepfather replied in a hard voice. “A man who, I know, has made a great fortune for himself, told me that he had heard of a gold mine in Arizona. It was scheduled to produce enormous quantities of gold. He told me its prospects were fantastic and, because he has been so successful in the past, I believed him.”
    Belinda, listening, knew without his telling her what the outcome of this venture had been.
    “I put all the money from your mother’s jewels into this gold mine,” D’Arcy Rowland said angrily. “Then three weeks ago, I was told that the mine was not producing what they expected and they intended to abandon the whole project.”
    Belinda gave a little cry.
    “How could – you have been so mistaken in the – first place?”
    “That is exactly what I asked myself,” he replied. “I have lost every penny and there is nothing I can do about it.”
    For a moment Belinda felt sorry for him.
    Then she told herself it was very wrong of him to gamble everything in such a reckless manner.
    D’Arcy Rowland turned over some more pages of the inventory.
    Then he said,
    “There is nothing left in the safe worth tuppence. I have already pawned everything that was valuable.”
    Belinda did not reply.
    She only felt helplessly that things were even worse than she had anticipated.
    Suddenly her stepfather gave an exclamation,
    “I have just remembered,” he said, “that when I took your mother’s jewellery from the safe I found nothing there belonging to your father!”
    Belinda looked at him in surprise as he went on,
    “He must have had a gold watch and of course some cufflinks! Where are they?”
    “I-I suppose,” Belinda said slowly, “they will be upstairs in the room to which they were moved when you – married Mama.”
    D’Arcy Rowland shut the inventory.
    “Then we will go and have a look at them.”
    Belinda wanted to protest.
    She felt it was wrong to allow her stepfather to search through her father’s personal possessions for what he could sell off.
    Then she told herself sensibly that nothing could be worse than what had happened already.
    “I will get the key,” she volunteered.
    She knew her mother had put it in a drawer of her desk that stood in the morning room.
    She went there and, as she touched the desk, she thought of her mother and wondered if she was aware of the terrible predicament he was now in.
    “Help us, Mama!” she prayed. “You will understand better than anyone how ghastly– everything is.”
    She opened the drawer and found the key to the room to which her father’s clothes and personal possessions had been moved.
    She walked back into the hall.
    She found her stepfather was waiting expectantly and he started up the stairs without saying anything.
    The room in question was at the end of the corridor past the main bedrooms.
    It was a small single room that in the past had been slept in only when they were very overcrowded at Christmastime.
    Belinda unlocked the door and went in.
    She crossed to the windows, pulled back the curtains and raised the blinds.
    It was a pleasant room, if small and she saw that her father’s hats were all laid out on the bed.
    She knew his suits