'No, not you! I believe you are true enough. Your own neck will be in the rope too; so you'll say nothing. But I won't do it!—pass the champagne!—there's something so devilish blackguard in stealing a man's papers.'
Burke started, as if the tones of his companion's voice had stung him like an adder.
'Have you thought over your present condition?' said Burke firmly. 'You have not a guinea left; your debts in Paris alone, to my knowledge, are above forty thousand francs!'
'I'll never pay a franc of them—damned swindlers and Jew money-lenders!' was the cool reply.
'Might not some scrupulous moralist hint there was something blackguard in that?' said Burke, with slow and distinct articulation.
'What!' replied De Vere; 'do you come here to tutor me—a low-bred horse-jockey, a spy? Take off your hands, sir, or I'll alarm the room; let loose my collar!'
'Come, come, my lord, we 're both in fault,' said Burke, smothering his passion with a terrible effort; 'we of all men must not quarrel. Play is to us the air we breathe, the light we live in. Give me your hand.'
'Allow me to draw on my glove first,' said De Vere, in a tone of incomparable insolence.
'Champagne here!' said Burke to the waiter as he passed, and for some minutes neither spoke.
The clock chimed a quarter to two, and Burke started to his feet.