"And what difference will it make to me if people did believe you?" said Oliver, slowly.
The man stared at him open-mouthed. Oliver was taking a view of things which was unknown to Francis.
"Well," he answered, "considering that you and most of my relations and friends have cut me for the last ten years because I got into trouble over a few accounts at the bank—and considering the sorry figure I cut now in consequence—I don't know why you should be so careless of the possibility of partaking my downfall! I should say that it would be rather worse for you than it has been for me; and it hasn't been very nice for me, I can assure you!"
Oliver's face grew a trifle paler, but his voice was as smooth as ever when he began to speak.
"Now, look here, Francis," he said, "I'll be open and plain with you. Of course, I know what you are alluding to; it would be weakness to pretend that I did not. But I assure you that you are on the wrong track. In your case you were found to have embezzled money, falsified accounts, and played the devil with old Lawson's affairs generally. You were prosecuted for it, and the whole case was in the papers. You got off on some technical point, but everybody knew that you were guilty, and everybody cut you dead—except, you will remember, your brother and sister, who continued to give you money, and were exceedingly kind to you. You were publicly disgraced, and there was no way of hushing the matter up at all. I am sorry to be obliged to put things so disagreeably——"
"Go on! You needn't apologize," said Francis, with a rather husky laugh. "I know it all as well as you do. Go on."
"I wish to point out the difference between our positions," said Oliver, calmly. "I did something a little shady myself, when I was a lad of twenty—at your instigation, mind; I signed old Romaine's name in the wrong place, didn't I? Old Romaine found it out, kept the thing quiet, and said that he had given me the money. I expressed my regret, and the matter blew over. What can you make out of that story?"
He spoke very quietly, but there was a watchfulness in his eye, a slight twitching of his nostril, which proved him to be not entirely at his ease. His elder brother laughed aloud.
"If that were all!" he said. "But you forget how base the action would seem if all the circumstances were known! how black the treachery and ingratitude to a man who was, after all, your benefactor. Rosalind never knew of that little episode, I believe? And she has a good deal of respect for her husband's memory. I should like to see what she would say about it."
"She would not believe you, my dear boy."