“Now, then, what is it?”
“It is my master, Sir, Mr. Adolphus Ladarelle, has got into trouble—very serious trouble, I’m afraid, too—and if you can’t help him through it, there’s nobody can, I’m sure.”
“A duel?”
“No, Sir, he don’t fight.”
“Debt?”
“Not exactly debt, Sir, but he has been arrested within the last few hours.”
“Out with it. What’s the story?”
“You have heard about that Irish business, I suppose, Sir—that story of the young girl he pretended to have married to prevent Sir Within making her my Lady——”
“I know it all; go on.”
“Well, Sir, the worst of all that affair was, that it brought my master into close intimacy with a very dangerous fellow called O’Rorke, and though Mr. Ladarelle paid him—and paid him handsomely, too—for all he had done, and took his passage out to Melbourne, the fellow wouldn’t go. No, Sir, he swore he’d see Paris, and enjoy a little of Paris life, before he’d sail. I was for getting him aboard when he was half drunk, and shipping him off before he was aware of it; but my master was afraid of him, and declared that he was quite capable of coming back from the farthest end of the world to ‘serve him out’ for anything like ‘a cross.’”