“Yes; and it was no part of my intention to molest you, Luttrell. This meeting is, I assure you, the merest accident.”
“Let me go, then, Vyner; the shame is killing me; I wouldn’t that you had seen me thus—in these rags, in all this misery. These are not the memories I wanted you to carry away with you; but what would you have? I came here to live like the others.”
“My dear old friend, I wanted to talk of long ago with you; it is not to reproach you I’ve come. Take my word for it, I feel too acutely all the wrong you have suffered from mine. I know too well at whose door your heaviest injuries lie.”
“If I had attempted to be more or better than my neighbours, I couldn’t have lived here,” cried he, eagerly reverting to his self-defence.
“But why live here, Luttrell? It is not at your age, or with your abilities, a man retires from the game of life.”
“I have played all my cards, Gervais,” said he, with a wild laugh, “and never scored a point with them.”
“How many a fellow has had a long run of ill-luck, to be repaid by as great a share of fortune after.”
“Ay, but I ‘ll not try it! I don’t ask, I don’t wish it. If I were to win now, I have nothing to do with my winnings.”
“Think of your boy—your fine boy, Luttrell!”
“Ah, Robinson!” cried he, laughing; and Vyner blushed deeply as he fancied how the child had repeated the nickname. “There’s only one way he could want such assistance, and if he but live here, he’ll never need it.”