“Dear Bill,” it ran, “I’ve been unlucky again and dropped a pot. Shall want 500 pounds by the 1st October. No shuffling, mind; money down; but I think that you know me too well to play any more larx. When can you tear yourself away, and come and give your E—— a look? Bring some tin when you come, and we will have times.—Thine, The Tiger.”
“The Tiger, yes, the Tiger,” he gasped, his face working with passion and his grey eyes glinting as he tore the epistle to fragments, threw them down and stamped on them. “Well, be careful that I don’t one day cut your claws and paint your stripes. By heaven, if ever a man felt like murder, I do now. Five hundred more, and I haven’t five thousand clear in the world. Truly we pay for the follies of our youth! It makes me mad to think of those fools Cossey and Son forcing that place into the market just now. There’s a fortune in it at the price. In another year or two I might have recovered myself—that devil of a woman might be dead—and I have several irons in the fire, some of which are sure to turn up trumps. Surely there must be a way out of it somehow. There’s a way out of everything except Death if only one thinks enough, but the thing is to find it,” and he stopped in his walk opposite to the window that looked upon the street, and put his hand to his head.
As he did so he caught sight of the figure of a tall gentleman strolling idly towards the office door. For a moment he stared at him blankly, as a man does when he is trying to catch the vague clue to a new idea. Then, as the figure passed out of his view, he brought his fist down heavily upon the sill.
“Edward Cossey, by George!” he said aloud. “There’s the way out of it, if only I can work him, and unless I have made a strange mistake, I think I know the road.”
A couple of minutes afterwards a tall, shapely young man, of about twenty-four or five years of age, came strolling into the office where Mr. Quest was sitting, to all appearance hard at work at his correspondence. He was dark in complexion and decidedly distinguished-looking in feature, with large dark eyes, dark moustachios, and a pale, somewhat Spanish-looking skin. Young as the face was, it had, if observed closely, a somewhat worn and worried air, such as one would scarcely expect to see upon the countenance of a gentleman born to such brilliant fortunes, and so well fitted by nature to do them justice, as was Mr. Edward Cossey. For it is not every young man with dark eyes and a good figure who is destined to be the future head of one of the most wealthy private banks in England, and to inherit in due course a sum of money in hard cash variously estimated at from half a million to a million sterling. This, however, was the prospect in life that opened out before Mr. Edward Cossey, who was now supposed by his old and eminently business-like father to be in process of acquiring a sound knowledge of the provincial affairs of the house by attending to the working of their branch establishments in the Eastern counties.
“How do you do, Quest?” said Edward Cossey, nodding somewhat coldly to the lawyer and sitting down. “Any business?”
“Well, yes, Mr. Cossey,” answered the lawyer, rising respectfully, “there is some business, some very serious business.”
“Indeed,” said Edward indifferently, “what is it?”
“Well, it is this, the house has ordered a foreclosure on the Honham Castle estates—at least it comes to that——”
On hearing this intelligence Edward Cossey’s whole demeanour underwent the most startling transformation—his languor vanished, his eye brightened, and his form became instinct with active life and beauty.