Turning into Saint James's Street, Alice saw her brother standing at the side of a crossing, with a great-coat and a white muffler on, the air being sharp. A couple of carriages drawn up near the pavement, and the passing of two or three others on the outside, for a moment checked their progress, and Alice, had not the window been up, could have spoken to him as they passed. He did not see them, but the light of a lamp was on his face, and she was shocked to see how ill he looked.
“There is Dick,” she said, touching her uncle's arm, “looking so miserable! Shall we speak to him!”
“No, dear, never mind him—he's well enough.” David Arden peeped at his nephew as they passed. “He is beginning to take an interest in what really concerns him.”
She looked at her uncle, not understanding his meaning.
“We can talk of it another time, dear,” he added with a cautionary glance at the maid, who sat in the corner at the other side.
Richard Arden was on his way to the place where he meant to recover his losses. He had been playing deep at Colonel Marston's lodgings, but not yet luckily. He thought he had used his credit there as far as he could successfully press it.
The polite young men who had their supper there that night, and played after he left till nearly five o'clock in the morning, knew perfectly what he had lost at the Derby; but they did not know how perilously, on the whole, he was already involved. Was Richard Arden, who had lost nearly seven hundred pounds at Colonel Marston's little gathering, though he had not paid them yet, now quite desperate? By no means. It is true he had, while Vandeleur was out, made an excursion to the City, and, on rather hard terms, secured a loan of three hundred pounds—a trifle which, if luck favoured, might grow to a fortune; but which, if it proved contrary, half an hour would see out.
He had locked this up in his desk, as a reserve for a theatre quite different from Marston's little party; and on his way to that more public and also more secret haunt, he had called at his lodgings for it. It was not that small deposit that cheered him, but a curious and unexpected little note which he found there. It presented by no means a gentlemanlike exterior. The hand was a round clerk's-hand, with flourishing capitals, on an oblong blue envelope, with a vulgar little device. A dun, he took it to be; and he was not immediately relieved when he read at the foot of it, “Levi.” Then he glanced to the top, and read, “Dear Sir.”
This easy form of address he read with proper disdain.
“I am instructed by a most respectable party who is desirous to assist you, to the figure of £1,000 or upwards, at nominal discounts, to meet you and ascertain your wishes thereupon, if possible to-night, lest you should suffer inconvenience.
“Yours truly,
“Israel Levi.“P.S.—In furtherance of the above, I shall be at Dignum's Divan, Strand, from 11 P.M. to-night to 1 A.M.”