"Advice." Gaythorpe was inquisitively silent. "I'm interested in him, you know."
"You're worse. You're inquisitive." Both smiled with a kind of determination. Gaythorpe grunted, conning afresh the points of his information.
"As you know," he presently resumed, "my interest is largely in you. It's by way of being paternal. Before this evening I should have said that you were a bit on the hard side. But there's nothing a sentimental idealist might not do; and I see now that you're a sentimental idealist. I'm filled with fear. I see you Quixotically ruining your family for the sake of self-mortification. You want to help this man because you dislike him. I tell you what's the matter with you, Edgar. Your particular kind of egotism leads you to make a fetish of magnanimity."
"Oh!" laughed Edgar.
"It isn't cowardice. It's indifference. The only thing that will save you is to fall deeply in love with Miss Fly-away. She will tempt you to imprudence, perhaps; but she will vitalise you, and harden you."
"If you remember, she was to marry me only when she was reformed," parried Edgar. "You seem to have forgotten that."
"On the contrary, you misjudge me. Any man, marrying the most reformed character, will find that he has domesticated a tigress," replied Gaythorpe. "Marriage is an illuminating experiment. And now to revert to your unsympathetic correspondent...."
v
They parted well before midnight, Gaythorpe to travel by taxicab to Waterloo and thence to his home at Hindhead, and Edgar to walk home through the deserted streets. Gaythorpe went his way still ignorant of the identity of Edgar's correspondent; but by his adroit questioning he had increased Edgar's preoccupation with the subject of that letter. It had been a perfectly simple letter, containing an account of various Stock-buying experiments which had come to disaster, a list of securities held, a statement of immediate need, and a request for advice. The writer of the letter had need of several thousand pounds, and if he were to sell the stock he held it would involve him in still further loss. Therefore, although Edgar had been technically truthful in saying that there had been no request for a loan, he had no doubt at all that the fitting reply to the letter would be an offer of assistance.
But why a bank had not been asked to advance money on the securities, which would have been the normal course to adopt, Edgar did not understand. Had the writer been a close personal friend, he could have seen the whole thing clearly, and his offer would have been immediate. But the letter was from Monty Rosenberg. Edgar was deeply perplexed. What was Monty's object in applying to him? That there must be some definite object he did not question. He could not suppose that Monty ever did anything without purpose; and in addition, he felt sure that Monty was a man to conceal from his acquaintances any hint that he was embarrassed.