"To the warren, with the others, to have a few shots at the rabbits; they overrun the place."
"Very good. Just ask Slyme about the accounts. By-the-by, he gets more irregular daily."
"More drunk, do you mean?" says Fabian. There are moments when his manner is both cold and uncompromising.
Portia regards him curiously.
"Yes! yes! Just so," says Sir Christopher, hastily. "But for the melancholy story that attaches itself to him—and that, of course, is some excuse for him—I really should not feel myself justified in keeping him here much longer."
"What story?" asks Portia.
"Oh! well; it all lies in a nutshell. It is an old story, too; one has so often heard it. A bad son—dissipated—in perpetual hot water. A devoted father. Then, one day, a very bad story comes, and the son has to fly the country. And then, some time afterward, news comes of his death. Slyme never saw him again. He broods over that, I think; at least, he has never been the same man since the son, Matthew, left England. It was all a very unhappy business."
"For the father, perhaps. For the son, he had more than ordinary luck to die as soon as he did," says Fabian. He does not speak at all bitterly. Only hopelessly, and without heart or feeling.
"Nobody knows how old Gregory got him out of the country so cleverly," says Sir Christopher. "It was a marvel how he managed to elude the grasp of the law."
"He satisfied the one principal creditor, I suppose?" says Fabian, indifferently.