“What befell him at college?” Felix asked. “He was too fond of pleasure? Mr. Brand certainly will not teach him any of those secrets!”
“He was too fond of something of which he should not have been fond. I suppose it is considered a pleasure.”
Felix gave his light laugh. “My dear uncle, is there any doubt about its being a pleasure? C’est de son âge, as they say in France.”
“I should have said rather it was a vice of later life—of disappointed old age.”
Felix glanced at his uncle, with his lifted eyebrows, and then, “Of what are you speaking?” he demanded, smiling.
“Of the situation in which Clifford was found.”
“Ah, he was found—he was caught?”
“Necessarily, he was caught. He couldn’t walk; he staggered.”
“Oh,” said Felix, “he drinks! I rather suspected that, from something I observed the first day I came here. I quite agree with you that it is a low taste. It’s not a vice for a gentleman. He ought to give it up.”
“We hope for a good deal from Mr. Brand’s influence,” Mr. Wentworth went on. “He has talked to him from the first. And he never touches anything himself.”