Her eyes twinkled. “No, of course I would not!” she admitted. “You are so very loath to tell me anything that I am quite forced to ask you. Is it anything to do with a woman — what Sir Horace would call a bit of muslin, perhaps?”
“Sophy! Upon my word! No! Nothing of the sort!”
“Money, then?”
He did not answer, and after a moment she patted invitingly the sofa on which she sat, and said, “Do, pray, come and sit down! I don’t suppose it is by half so bad as you fear.”
He gave a short laugh, but after a little more persuasion sat down beside her, and sank his head in between his clenched fists. “I shall come about. If the worst comes to the worst, a man may always enlist!”
“True,” she agreed. “But I know something of the army, and I do not think that life in the ranks would suit you at all. Besides, it would very much distress my aunt, you know!”
It was not to be supposed that a young gentleman of Hubert’s order would readily confide his difficulties into the ears of a female, and that female not quite as old as he was himself; but after a good deal of coaxing Sophy managed to extract his story from him. It was not a very coherent tale, and she was obliged to prompt him several times during its recital, but in the end she gathered that he had fallen into the clutches of a moneylender.
There had been some trouble over debts contracted during the previous year at Oxford, the full sum of which he had not dared to disclose to his brother, hoping, in the immemorial way of youth, to be able to discharge them himself. He had knowing friends who knew all the gaming houses in London; quite a brief run of luck at French Hazard, or roulette, would have set all to rights; but when, during the Christmas vacation, he had sought this method of recuperating his fortunes, only the most unprecedented bad luck had attended his efforts.
He still shuddered whenever he recalled those ruinous, and, indeed, terrifying evenings, a circumstance which led his sapient cousin to infer that gaming held little attraction for him. Faced with large debts of honor, already in hot water with his formidable brother for far smaller debts, what could he do but jump into the river, or go to a moneylender? And even so, he assured Sophy, he would never have gone near a curst moneylender had he not felt certain of being able to pay the shark off within six months.
“You mean, when you come of age next month?” Sophy asked.