"Listen to him! listen to Benedick the married man; so full of domestic happiness that he must crow over us poor bachelors. Very well, old fellow, as fate has willed it, is my life; the more work I have the happier I am: if I had not any, I should stick my head into the Temple fountain, and thereby incur the odium of the Benchers. No, I must not do that quite, while I've the old governor and Constance left, lest I should be supremely wretched; whereas in my work I'm thoroughly happy; and as for solitary chambers--well, they are solitary now, but they wern't once, and won't be again soon, I think. My old chum's coming home."
"Your old chum? Who do you mean?"
"Why, the man who lived with me in these rooms before, and will share them again, I hope. Gordon Frere."
"Gordon Frere? Is he coming back to England--to London?" Robert Streightley's face turned pale as he asked this question, and his lips twitched with nervous anxiety.
"I hope so. I've written to him to try and persuade him to do so. He's a clever fellow, airy and specious, with what they call a good 'gift of the gab;' and I want him to try his fortune at the bar."
Streightley rose from his chair, took a few paces round the room, then settled himself again with his face shaded by his hand, looking at his friend.
"You were very intimate with this man Frere, Charley?" he asked in a hard dry voice, after a minute's pause.
"Intimate? Didn't he live here, I tell you?--though you knew it long since, if you'll only give yourself the trouble to recollect."
"And you were thoroughly in his confidence?"
Charles Yeldham answered, "Entirely." But the word had scarcely escaped him when he saw the drift of the question, and wished he had pondered ere replying.