“Oh! Now you are back at that Head-of-the-House stuff!” replied Matthew, with an unconvincing laugh.

“I hadn’t thought of that, but now you put me in mind of it I might as well justify my position. Are you under a cloud, Matt?”

“Oh, lord, yes, but that ain’t it! At least, in a way it is, but not as you think. My snyder is one of the faithful, thank God!”

Correctly interpreting this mystic phrase to mean that Mr. Ware’s tailor gave him long credit, the Duke said, “What’s the figure?”

There was a long silence. Mr. Ware broke it. “If you want to know, I need five thousand pounds!”

“Oh!” said the Duke. “I haven’t such a sum on me at the moment, but I daresay I could find it.”

Matthew began to laugh. “Gilly, you fool! As though my uncle would let you!”

“He has never kept me short of money. In any event, since I was twenty-one I have been at liberty to draw what I please. It is only my principal I may not tamper with.”

“Well, if he would let you I would not! I am not such a sponge! I was only bamming!”

“Matt, what is it?”

Another long silence followed this question, but the sympathy in his cousin’s voice won Matthew’s confidence. “Gilly, I am run off my legs—all to pieces!” he said, sounding very much more like a scared schoolboy than a young gentleman about to enter on his third year at the University.

The Duke tucked a hand in his arm. “We’ll raise the wind, Matt, never fear! But what is it? You are not scorched to that figure!”

“Oh, no, it’s not debt! But I don’t know what to do! It’s breach of promise!”

The Duke was somewhat staggered by this revelation.

“Breach of promise! Matt, I don’t know what you have been doing, but who the devil could be suing you for such a sum as that?”

“Not me! Suing you! Through my father, I daresay. To keep our name out of court! Everyone knows how rich you are!”

“What a fool I am!” said Gilly slowly. “Of course! But did you make an offer of marriage to this female?”

“Well, yes, I suppose I did,” said Matthew wretchedly. “You know how it is when one writes a letter!”

“Did you write her letters?”

“Yes, I did, but I never thought—And she did not answer one of them!” said Matthew, on a note of ill-usage.

“Matt, has she many of your letters?”

“It isn’t she: it’s a fellow who says he is her guardian. He says he has half a dozen of my letters. I do not know how I came to write so many, for in general, you know, I am not much of a dab in that line! But she was so excessively beautiful—! You can have no notion, Gilly!”

“Where did you meet her? Not in London?”

“Oh, no! In the High! She was looking in at a shop-window, and there was a lady with her—well, I thought she was a lady, but when I came to know her better of course I saw that she was not quite the thing, but that didn’t signify, and she said she was her aunt, and her name was Mrs. Dovercourt, but I daresay it was not. Anyway, Belinda dropped her reticule, and of course I picked it up, and—and that is how it all began!”

The Duke, feeling a trifle bewildered by this not very clear account of his cousin’s entanglement, suggested that they should thrash the matter out in the privacy of his library at Sale House. Matthew agreed to this, but said with a heavy sigh that he did not see what could be done about it. “I won’t let you pay, Gilly, and that’s an end to it! It’s all very well to say you may draw what money you please, but what a flutter there would be if you drew such a sum as that! It would be bound to come to my uncle’s ears, and he would tell my father, and then I should have nothing to do but to jump into the river, and that would not answer, because I am a pretty strong swimmer, and I daresay I shouldn’t drown at all! Of course, if I were like you, and could afford to keep my own phaeton, or curricle, or some such thing, I could drive to the devil, and break my neck, but I should like to see anyone driving a job-horse and gig to the devil! Why, you couldn’t do it! Job-horses are all slugs! I suppose I could blow my brains out, but it would mean purchasing a good pistol, and I’m not too well-blunted at this present, and to tell you the truth, Gilly, I don’t above half fancy the idea.”

The Duke, realizing that Captain Ware’s punch had something to do with this despairing utterance, replied in soothing terms, agreeing that among his own many advantages must be ranked the means of putting a period to his life in an expensive way, and drew his young relative on towards Curzon Street. The walk did much to clear Mr. Ware’s clouded intellect, but nothing to lift his depression. When he entered Sale House in Gilly’s wake, he made ah effort to appear sprightly and at his ease, but achieved such ah alarming result that had the Duke’s upper servants had eyes to spare for anyone but their master they must have noticed it, and have wondered what could be in the wind. But in the event Borrowdale, Chigwell, and Nettlebed were far too much taken-up with conveying to his Grace by innuendo a sense of anxiety he had caused them to labour under all the evening to have any attention to spare for Mr. Matthew.

The Duke bore all the solicitude that met him with his usual patience, disclaiming any feeling of chill or of fatigue, and desired Borrowdale to bring wine and biscuits into the library. “And you need none of you wait up for me!” he added. “Leave a candle on the table, and I shall do very well.”

The steward bowed, and said that it should be as his Grace wished, but Borrowdale and Nettlebed were instantly drawn into a temporary alliance, and exchanged speaking glances, expressive of their mutual determination to sit up all night, if need be.

The Duke led Matthew into the library, and installed him in a chair by the fire; one of the footmen came in with a taper, with the zealous intention of lighting all the candles in the wall-sconces and chandeliers with which the room was generously provided; and Borrowdale soon followed him with a silver tray of refreshments. Having restrained the footman, and assured Borrowdale that he should want nothing more that night, the Duke got rid of them both, and took a seat opposite his cousin’s. “Well, now, Matt, tell me the whole!” he invited.

“You won’t blab to my father if I do, will you?” said Matthew suspiciously.

“What a fellow you must think me! Of course I will not!”

His mind relieved on this score, Matthew embarked on a long and somewhat obscure story. It came haltingly at first, and with a good many rambling excuses, but when he found that his cousin had apparently no intention either of exclaiming at his folly, or of blaming him for it, he abandoned” his slightly pugnacious and extremely self-exculpatory manner, and became very much more natural, unburdening his troubled soul to the Duke, and feeling considerably the better for it.

The tale was not always easy to follow, and in spite of its length, and wealth of detail, there were several gaps in it, but the salient points were not difficult to grasp. The Duke gathered that his impulsive cousin had fallen in love at sight with a female of surpassing beauty, who was visiting Oxford with a lady who might, or might not, be her aunt. This lady, so far from discouraging the advances of a strange gentleman, had most obligingly given him her direction, and had assured him that she would be happy to see him if he should chance at any time to be passing her lodging. And of course Matthew had passed her lodging, and had received a flattering welcome there; and, finding that the lovely Belinda was even lovelier than his memory had painted her, lost no time in plunging neck and crop into an affaire which seemed to have run the gamut of stolen meetings, passionate love-letters, and wild plans of a flight to Gretna Green. Yes, he admitted, he rather thought he had mentioned Gretna Green.

The Duke knit his brows a little at this. “But, Matt, I do not perfectly understand!” he said apologetically. “You say she is threatening to sue you for breach of promise, but if you were willing to marry her I do not see how this comes about! Why would she not go with you?”

“Well, I daresay she would have,” said Matthew. “She—she is a very persuadable girl, you know. But the thing is that it costs the devil of a sum to hire a chaise to go all that way, and what with having sustained some losses, and its being pretty near the end of the term, I was not at all beforehand with the world, and I didn’t know how to raise the wind. You know what my father is! He would have lacked up the devil of a dust if I had written to ask him for some more blunt, and ten to one would have asked me what I wanted it for, because he always does, just as though I were a child, and not able to take care of my affairs! And I never thought of writing to you, Gilly—not that I would have done so if I had, for it might have come to my uncle’s ears then, and that would have been worse than anything! So what with one thing and another, it came to nothing, and, to own the truth, I was afterwards very glad of it, because I don’t think Belinda would do for me at all—in fact, I know she would not!”

“Did she seem much distressed at your plan’s coming I to nothing?” asked the Duke curiously.

“Oh, no, she did not care! It is all this Liversedge, who writes that he is her guardian. Stay, I will show you his letters—he has written to me twice, you know. I did not answer the first letter, and now he has written again, threatening to bring an action against me, and—oh, Gilly, what the devil am I to do?”

He ended on a decided note of panic, and, thrusting a hand into his pocket, produced two rather crumpled letters, written by someone who signed himself, with a flourish, Swithin Liversedge .....