"Heavily!" echoed Austin Ambrose. "My dear Blair! And you have had a run of bad luck all the week?"
"Yes, luck has been against me," assented Blair, and he beckoned to a footman who brought him some champagne.
"You don't know how much you have lost?" continued Austin Ambrose, watching him as he drank the wine.
"No, not exactly. I told them to send the I O U's to Tyler & Driver's. Are you going now? I am afraid I have kept you."
"To Tyler & Driver's!" said Austin Ambrose, as he strove to keep pace with Blair's long strides. "My dear fellow, Tyler told me only yesterday that you had overdrawn your account, and that he did not know how to arrange! And that was before this loss on Springtime! And there are those I O U's to-night! Good heavens, my dear Blair, you will be utterly ruined."
Blair stopped and took out his cigar-case.
"Got a light?" he said. "Never mind, I've found one. Ruined? Do they say that? Well, they ought to know," and he laughed grimly. "So they say I am ruined; well, what does it matter? If I am broke, I am the only person to whom it will signify. If I were a married man, now, and had got a wife——" He stopped, and the hand that held his cigar quivered in the lamplight; "but I haven't, you see. Ruined! Well, perhaps it's as well. What do fellows do when they go under, Austin? Why, go abroad, don't they? I'll go abroad. I'll go to Boulogne, and be a billiard marker, or I'll work my way out to Australia and turn cattle runner." He stopped abruptly and looked up at the sky, now streaked with the red rays of the coming sun. "Oh, Austin, if I could only go to some place where I could forget her! She haunts me—haunts me day and night! Go where I will, do what I will, I see her before me, just as she looked as she stood on the hill waving her hand the last morning"—his voice broke—"the last time I saw her. Oh, my darling, my darling!"
He stopped with a great sob, and then hurried on, drawing his hat over his eyes.
Austin Ambrose watched him with keen scrutiny, much as a surgeon might watch the subject upon which he was experimenting with saw and knife.
"Blair," he said, panting a little, for his victim walked fast. "You should fight against this weakness. It is ruining you, body and soul. It is not fair to yourself, or to your best friends. To me, for instance, or to the earl."