“Hanged if I know. He has let me have a great deal lately. Five hundred, perhaps.”
“Jack, you have been a fool,” said Leonard. “I told you that it was no use counting upon the place your cousin Stephen promised you.”
“I don’t so much care for myself, but Una, Una,” said Jack, with a groan. Then he jumped up. “Let us go and get some dinner, and think it over.”
They went to a well-known house in Strand, and Jack, careless Jack, ordered a dinner fit for a prince, and enjoyed it as he would have enjoyed it if he had been going to be hanged on the morrow.
“I don’t understand Moss,” he said. “He was everything that was agreeable and pleasant a few days ago.”
“And today he was like a wolf hunting for a bone,” said Leonard. “Hello, who’s this?” for a gentleman had entered the dining-room and approached their table.
“Why, it’s Stephen!” exclaimed Jack, forgetting Moss in a moment. “Just in time, Stephen, we’ll have another bottle of claret up. What on earth brings you to town? And how is—how are they all?”
Stephen sat down with a grave smile, and just sipped the claret, the best the house had on its list. And he sat and talked till the wine was finished, the greater part of which Jack drank, then he said:
“Jack, I want you to come to my chambers; I have something to tell you.”
“All right,” said Jack. “Leonard can find his way home very well.”