“If I were alone in the world, as I have told you again and again, perhaps I might pin my fate to yours. But my brother!”
“There it is, always wrong when we act from our feelings. My whole life, which some day or other I will tell you, proves that. Your brother—bah! is he not very well off with his own uncle and aunt?—plenty to eat and drink, I dare say. Come, man, you must be as hungry as a hawk—a slice of the beef? Let well alone, and shift for yourself. What good can you do your brother?”
“I don’t know, but I must see him; I have sworn it.”
“Well, go and see him, and then strike across the country to me. I will wait a day for you,—there now!”
“But tell me first,” said Philip, very earnestly, and fixing his dark eyes on his companion,—“tell me—yes, I must speak frankly—tell me, you who would link my fortunes with your own,—tell me, what and who are you?”
Gawtrey looked up.
“What do you suppose?” said he, dryly.
“I fear to suppose anything, lest I wrong you; but the strange place to which you took me the evening on which you saved me from pursuit, the persons I met there—”
“Well-dressed, and very civil to you?”
“True! but with a certain wild looseness in their talk that—But I have no right to judge others by mere appearance. Nor is it this that has made me anxious, and, if you will, suspicious.”