“I trust, my Lord, you will not press me in this matter; my position is a most painful one.”
“It is worse than painful, sir; it is humiliating. But,” added he, after a short pause, “I have reason to be grateful to you. You have rescued me from, perhaps, a very grave indiscretion. Your position—your wife's health—your children's welfare had all interested me. I might have—No matter what, sir. I have recovered the balance of my mind. I am myself again.”
“My Lord, I will be open with you.”
“I will accept of no forced confidences, sir,” said the Judge, waving his hand haughtily.
“They are not forced, my Lord, farther than my dislike to give you pain renders them so. The man to whom you sent me this morning is no stranger to me—would that he had been!—would that I had never known nor heard of him! Very few words will explain why, my Lord. I only entreat that, before I say them, they may be in strictest confidence between us.”
“If they require secrecy, sir, they shall have it.”
“Quite enough, my Lord,—amply sufficient for me is this assurance. This person, then, my Lord, was the old friend and brother officer of Sir Frank Dillon, my father-in-law. They lived as young men in closest friendship together; shared perils, amusements, and purse together. For many years nothing occurred to interrupt the relations between them, though frequent remonstrances from Dillon's family against the intimacy might possibly have caused a coolness; for the world had begun to talk of Fossbrooke with a certain distrust, comparing his mode of living with the amount of his fortune, and half hinting that his successes at play were more than accidental.
“Still Dillon held to him; and to break the tie at last, his family procured an Indian appointment for him, and sent him to Calcutta. Fossbrooke no sooner heard of it than he sold off his town house and horses, and actually sailed in the same packet with him.”
“Let us sit down, Colonel Sewell; I am wearied with walking, and I should like to hear the remainder of this story.”
“I will make it very brief, my Lord. Here is a nice bench to rest on. Arrived in India, they commenced a style of living the most costly and extravagant imaginable. Their receptions, their dinners, their equipages, their retinues, completely eclipsed the splendors of the native princes. For a while these were met promptly by ready money; later on came bills, at first duly met, and at last dishonored. On investigation, however, it was found that the greater number—far the greater number—of the acceptances were issued by Dillon alone,—a circumstance which puzzled none so much as Dillon himself, who never remembered the emergencies that had called for them.”