Lord St. Austell was walking up and down the room, and he said this half to himself. But Deborah, all passionate excitement, sprang up from her seat and placed herself right in front of him.
“What do you mean, Lord St. Austell?”
“Rees has been telling his mother a parcel of falsehoods, that’s all. Do you think an idle, self-indulgent young scamp like that would get a salary large enough for him to spare two pounds a week? Do lawyers send their clerks scudding about all over the country like bagmen? No, Miss Audaer, our young friend is amusing himself, and doesn’t want his mother to come up to interrupt his pleasures.”
“But he has no money!” said Deborah, whose face expressed the strength of her feelings.
“How do you know? He manages to have the things that money gets, I happen to know, for not six weeks ago I saw him at Goodwood, perfectly dressed and perfectly mounted. Now, those are things which people can only do when they have either money or credit. The little beggar had the audacity to cut me, not that I bear him any malice for that,” he added, good humoredly.
Poor Deborah was greatly troubled.
“He is so weak, so dreadfully weak; he must have got into bad hands,” she said, in a quavering voice. “And yet, what can one do? Mamma will not go up to see him, because from the tone of his letters she can see he does not want her to. And she believes, or tries to believe, his constant promise of coming down to see us.”
“Well, if you wait for that, you will have to wait until the young scapegrace has got to the end of his tether,” said the earl, with a short laugh.
“But what am I to do? Mamma will believe nothing; indeed, I could scarcely wish her to. In the meantime——”
“In the meantime the lad may go one step too far, and the next news you have of him may be—through the newspapers.”