"Ah! Sidney, if ever we should part, perhaps you will love me no longer!"
"Don't say so," said Sidney. "But we sha'n't part, Philip?"
Philip sighed, and turned away as his brother leaped into bed. Something whispered to him that danger was near; and as it was, could Sidney grow up, neglected and uneducated; was it thus that he was to fulfil his trust?
CHAPTER IX.
"But oh, what storm was in that mind!"—CRABBE. Ruth
While Philip mused, and his brother fell into the happy sleep of childhood, in a room in the principal hotel of the town sat three persons, Arthur Beaufort, Mr. Spencer, and Mr. Blackwell.
"And so," said the first, "he rejected every overture from the
Beauforts?"
"With a scorn I cannot convey to you!" replied the lawyer. "But the fact is, that he is evidently a lad of low habits; to think of his being a sort of helper to a horse dealer! I suppose, sir, he was always in the stables in his father's time. Bad company depraves the taste very soon; but that is not the worst. Sharp declares that the man he was talking with, as I told you, is a common swindler. Depend on it, Mr. Arthur, he is incorrigible; all we can do is to save the brother."
"It is too dreadful to contemplate!" said Arthur, who, still ill and languid, reclined on a sofa.
"It is, indeed," said Mr. Spencer; "I am sure I should not know what to do with such a character; but the other poor child, it would be a mercy to get hold of him."