"He is in great trouble and—and danger. A worse danger than a monetary one."
He smiled.
"Can there be worse?" he said with a city man's incredulity. "We live in a prosaic age, Lady Eleanor, from which we have dismissed the midnight assassin and all the other romantic perils which made life and history so interesting in the middle ages; and the only dangers we run now are from a railway or steamboat accident——."
She tried to listen to him patiently.
"It is not that kind of danger I was thinking," she said. "Is it not possible for a man to—to ruin and wreck his life in—many ways, Mr. Duncombe?"
He looked at her still half smilingly.
"Oh, yes, a man may enlist as a common soldier, or forge a check, or marry his cook; but I do not imagine that there is any risk of Lord Auchester committing any of these—shall we say, follies?"
"Of all the things you have mentioned, it seems to me that the last is the worst," said Lady Eleanor bitterly.
"Yes?"
He raised his brows again.