Harry lost his temper instead.
"Look here, Mr. Lowndes, you have been a good friend to us, as you say. You were a good friend to us last night. You've been a good friend to me this very day. But I simply can't conceive how you could go and do a thing like this; and I must have my bag by five o'clock, or we shall be friends no longer."
There was heat enough and fire enough in the young fellow's tone to bring blood to the cheek of an older man so spoken to. Lowndes looked delighted; he even clapped his hands.
"Well said, Ringrose; said like a sportsman!" he cried. "I like to hear a young chap talk out straight from the chest like that. I think all the more of you, my son, and you shall have your old bag by five o'clock if I bust for it. Only look here: don't you be angry with your grandfather!"
Harry burst out laughing in his own despite.
"It's impossible to be angry with you," he said. "Still, I must——"
"I see you must. So I'll jump into a hansom and I'll raise the fiver to redeem your bag if I have to drive all over the City of London for it!"
Harry laughed again, and sat down to wait as Lowndes went clattering down the stone stair-case. And as he sat there alone he suddenly grew pale. In his rage with Lowndes he had forgotten Lowndes's daughter, and now the thought of her turned his heart sick. He found it possible to forgive the father for an indictable offence. It should have been comparatively easy to forgive the daughter for receiving in her sore need the virtual proceeds of that crime. Yet the thought that she had done so was intolerable to him, and his heart began a sudden tattoo as a stiff step was heard ascending the stairs.
"Mr. Backhouse," said Harry, as that worthy reappeared, "I want a plain answer to a plain question."
"I shall be delighted to give you one," said Mr. Backhouse, "if it is in my power, sir."