For several minutes neither uttered a word; at last Fossbrooke said: “Trafford was right not to meet me. It has saved him some prevarication, and me some passion. Write and tell him I said so.”
“I can scarcely do that, without avowing that I have revealed to you more than I am willing to own.”
“When you told me in whose hands he was, you told me more than all the rest. Few men can live in Dudley Sewells intimacy and come unscathed out of the companionship.”
“That would tell ill for myself, for I have been of late on terms of much intimacy with him.”
“You have n't played with him?”
“Ay, but I have; and, what's more, won of him,” said Cave, laughing.
“You profited little by that turn of fortune,” said Foss-brooke, sarcastically.
“You imply that he did not pay his debt; but you are wrong: he came to me the morning after we had played, and acquitted the sum lost.”
“Why, I am entangling myself in the miracles I hear! That Sewell should lose is strange enough: that he should pay his losses is simply incredible.”
“Your opinion of him would seem to be a very indifferent one.”