“Stay!” cried he to the adjutant, who stood in the window awaiting further instructions; “on second thoughts, do telegraph. Say, 'Return at once.' This will prepare him for something.”
CHAPTER IX. A BREAKFAST AT THE VICARAGE
On the day after the picnic Sir Brook went by invitation to breakfast with the vicar.
“When a man asks you to dinner,” said Fossbrooke, “he generally wants you to talk; when he asks you to breakfast, he wants to talk to you.”
Whatever be the truth of this adage generally, it certainly-had its application in the present case. The vicar wanted very much to talk to Sir Brook.
As they sat, therefore, over their coffee and devilled kidneys, chatting over the late excursion and hinting at another, the vicar suddenly said: “By the way, I want you to tell me something of the young fellow who was one of us yesterday. Tobin, our doctor here, who is a perfect commission-agent for scandal, says he is the greatest scamp going; that about eight or ten months ago the 'Times' was full of his exploits in bankruptcy; that his liabilities were tens of thousands,—assets nil. In a word, that, notwithstanding his frank, honest look, and his unaffected manner, he is the most accomplished scapegrace of the age.”
“And how much of this do you believe?” asked Sir Brook, as he helped himself to coffee.
“That is not so easy to reply to; but I tell you, if you ask me, that I 'd rather not believe one word of it.”
“Nor need you. His Colonel told me something about the young fellow's difficulties; he himself related the rest. He went most recklessly into debt; betted largely on races, and lost; lent freely, and lost; raised at ruinous interest, and renewed at still more ruinous; but his father has paid every shilling of it out of that fortune which one day was to have come to him, so that Lionel's thirty thousand pounds is now about eight thousand. I have put the whole story into the fewest possible words, but that's the substance of it.”