“Far from it, Cave. It is without any qualification whatever. I deem him the worst fellow I ever knew; nor am I aware of any greater misfortune to a young fellow entering on life than to have become his associate.”
“You astonish me! I was prepared to hear things of him that one could not justify, nor would have willingly done themselves, but not to learn that he was beyond the pale of honor.”
“It is exactly where he stands, sir,—beyond the pale of honor. I wish we had not spoken of him,” said the old man, rising, and pacing the room. “The memory of that fellow is the bitterest draught I ever put to my lips; he has dashed my mind with more unworthy doubts and mean suspicions of other men than all my experience of life has ever taught me. I declare, I believe if I had never known him my heart would have been as hopeful to-day as it was fifty years ago.”
“How came it that I never heard you speak of him?”
“Is it my wont, Cave, to talk of my disasters to my friends? You surely have known me long enough to say whether I dwell upon the reverses and disappointments of my life. It is a sorry choice of topics, perhaps, that is left to men old as myself when they must either be croakers or boasters. At all events, I have chosen the latter; and people bear with it the better because they can smile at it.”
“I wish with all my heart I had never played with Sewell, and still more that I had not won of him.”
“Was it a heavy sum?”
“For a man like myself, a very heavy sum. I was led on—giving him his revenge, as it is called—till I found myself playing for a stake which, had I lost, would have cost me the selling my commission.”
Fossbrooke nodded, as though to say he had known of such, incidents in the course of his life.
“When he appeared at my quarters the next morning to settle the debt, I was so overcome with shame that I pledge you my word of honor, I believe I 'd rather have been the loser and taken all the ruin the loss would have brought down upon me.”