"No—indeed it is not!" rejoined Egerton. "Now really this is a great piece of negligence on the part of the compiler of the work; and if I were you, Dunstable, I would bring an action against him for damages. Because, only conceive how awkward this would make you appear before persons of suspicious dispositions. Well—upon my honour, as the baronet says—this coincidence is almost as extraordinary as that of the pawnbroker in Brick Lane."
While Egerton was thus speaking, his four friends exchanged significant glances which seemed to ask each other what all this could possibly mean.
"Yes—suspicious people would be inclined to imagine that the Dunstable estate was in the clouds rather than in Somersetshire," proceeded Egerton, who did not appear to notice the confusion of his guests. "But the world is so very ill-natured! Would you believe that there are persons so lamentably scandalous as to declare that our friend Chichester is no more an Honourable than I am, and that he really is the son of the pawnbroker in Brick Lane?"
"The villains!" cried Chichester, starting from his seat: "who are those persons that dare——"
"Wait one moment!" exclaimed Egerton: "it is my duty as a sincere friend to tell you each and all what I have heard. Those same scandalous and ill-natured people exceed all bounds of propriety; for they actually assert that Sir Rupert Harborough has for years been known as a profligate adventurer——"
"By God, Mr. Egerton!" cried the baronet: "I——"
"And they affirm in quite as positive a manner," continued the young man, heedless of this interruption, "that you, Dunstable, and you too, Cholmondeley, are nothing more nor less than ruined gamesters."
"Egerton," exclaimed the Colonel, foaming with indignation, "this is carrying a joke too far."
"A great deal too far," added Dunstable.
"It really is no joke at all, my lord and gentlemen," said the young man, now speaking in a tone expressive of the deepest disgust: "for every word I have uttered is firmly believed by myself!"