Lowndes guffawed.
"You'll never find me doing that!" he cried. "I leave the sitting up to my creditors! They'll sit up pretty slick before I've done with 'em—so will the noble Earl. Now let me enlighten you. You remember all those clothes I ordered from your trustful tailors, and how I told you never to neglect a good credit? Well, to give you a practical illustration of the merits of my advice, I've been living on those clothes ever since. I have so! Yesterday this time the whole boiling were up the spout. I just got out the dress-suit and this Inverness for one night only, and changed into them up here. Now I've got to put them in pop again, and that's why you find me with them on. Do you follow me, Ringrose? Those good old duds are the only garments I've got in the world—thanks to the so-called Right Honourable the Earl of Banff."
Harry could not smile. He was thinking of his tailors, and he shuddered to remember that Lowndes had also borrowed five pounds in hard cash from the accommodating firm. Harry had dazzling visions of eventual trouble and responsibility; then his eyes stole over to the forlorn figure by the window; and it was quivering in a way that cut him to the heart.
"You may like to blue your last fiver," he turned to Lowndes and cried; "but I wish to heaven you hadn't blued it on us! As for my mother, when she hears——"
"Don't tell her, Mr. Ringrose!" cried a breaking voice. "I shall die of shame if she ever knows."
Fanny Lowndes had turned about with her fine eyes drowned in tears, her strong hands clutched together in an agony of entreaty; and just then Harry felt that he could forgive her father much, but never for the grief and shame which he first heaped upon the girl, and then forced her to display.
"It's a queer thing, Ringrose," observed Lowndes, "that women never can be got to take a sensible view of these matters. Your mother—my daughter—they're every one of them alike."
He swung on his heel with a shrug, and went into the outer office to meet his friend Backhouse, who here returned from the usual errand. A trembling hand fell on Harry's arm.
"Do not think the worst of him!" whispered Fanny.
"It is only on your account," was his reply.