“I don’t like to see you in gaol, my boy,” was Phillip’s first remark. “I’m supposed to know nothing of your transgression; but I must acknowledge you were a fool, a big fool, for confessing it. If you’d only kept your tongue still you would never have been found out. Good-bye, old fellow; I hope to see you out again one of these days. We must all pay for our experience, you know. I jeopardise my position in society by visiting you here, you know, but for old old acquaintance sake I thought I’d call.”
“Thank you,” was Charley’s laconic reply, as Phillip left the prison. “If the truth were only known we might exchange places, perhaps.”
CHAPTER XXX.
PHILLIP PROGRESSES IN LOVE—HIS FURTHER SCHEMING.
While Charley Warbeck is receiving the last visits of a very few friends, prior to his journey from London to the State Prison, Mr. Phillip is in daily consultation with his legal advisers and his father’s executors.
From a deep study of his accounts, those interested came to the conclusion that Mr. Redgill deceased, was deeply involved in debt, and far beyond what any one might have expected.
“Who’d a believed it?” said Mr. Sloman, the lawyer, in surprise, when confidentially informed. “Who’d a thought that such a man as he was should be so much involved? Well, I’ve had some experience in worldly matters, but I never could have believed him to be so much in debt; no, not if an angel from heaven had warned me. What! old Redgill to be insolvent? I can’t believe it!”
Mr. Moss, who, as we know, was deeply interested, confessed that “his worst fears had been realised.”
He always supposed that the old gentlemen had been speculating too extensively.