Lord Adolphus Vanlorme was a customer of the house of Dunbar and Dunbar; the bill-brokers knew that his acceptance was a forgery; but they knew also that the signature of the drawer, Henry Dunbar, was genuine.
Messrs. Dunbar and Dunbar would not care to see the heir of their house in a criminal dock.
There had been no hitch, therefore, no scandal, no prosecution. The bills were duly honoured; but the dashing young officer was compelled to sell his commission, and begin life afresh as a junior clerk in the Calcutta banking-house.
This was a terrible mortification to the high-spirited young man.
The three men assembled in the quiet room behind the bank on this oppressive August evening were talking together of that old story.
"I never saw Henry Dunbar," Mr. Balderby said; "for, as you know, Wilmot, I didn't come into the firm till ten years after he sailed for India; but I've heard the story hinted at amongst the clerks in the days when I was only a clerk myself."
"I don't suppose you ever heard the rights of it, sir," Sampson Wilmot answered, fumbling nervously with an old horn snuff-box and a red cotton handkerchief, "and I doubt if any one knows the rights of that story except me, and I can remember it as well as if it all happened yesterday—ay, that I can—better than I remember many things that really did happen yesterday."
"Let's hear the story from you, then, Sampson," Mr. Balderby said. "As Henry Dunbar is coming home in a few days, we may as well know the real truth. We shall better understand what sort of a man our new chief is."
"To be sure, sir, to be sure," returned the old clerk. "It's five-and-thirty years ago,—five-and-thirty years ago this month, since it all happened. If I hadn't good cause to remember the date because of my own troubles, I should remember it for another reason, for it was the Waterloo year, and city people had been losing and making money like wildfire. It was in the year '15, sir, and our house had done wonders on 'Change. Mr. Henry Dunbar was a very handsome young man in those days—very handsome, very aristocratic-looking, rather haughty in his manners to strangers, but affable and free-spoken to those who happened to take his fancy. He was very extravagant in all his ways; generous and open-handed with money; but passionate and self-willed. It's scarcely strange he should have been so, for he was an only child; he had neither brother nor sister to interfere with him; and his uncle Hugh, who was then close upon fifty, was a confirmed bachelor,—so Henry considered himself heir to an enormous fortune."
"And he began his career by squandering every farthing he could get, I suppose?" said Mr. Balderby.