“‘Debts of honour’ you call ‘em, you young jackanapes!” he had raged. “I call them debts of the dirtiest dishonour you could pick up out of the gutter!” He swept Tony’s indignant remonstrances to one side. “If you call it honourable to play for money when you haven’t got it to pay with if you lose, a sense of honour’s a different thing from what it was in my young days. Why—why—why—” he spluttered, “it’s no better than stealing! You deserve a damn good hiding, let me tell you, and it’s what you’ll get one of these days if you can’t keep straight, you young devil!”
The old man had stormed on for a heated half-hour or so, while Tony had stood by and listened to him, white-faced and furious, his haughty young head flung up and his teeth clenched to keep back the bitter answers that fought for utterance. Finally, his hand still shaking with rage, Sir Philip had written a cheque that would cover his nephew’s losses.
“That’s the last time I pay your gambling debts,” he had said as he flung down the pen. “You’ve an allowance of six hundred a year, and if you exceed that again I’ll fire you out of the house neck and crop, and be damned to you!”
“I’ll go now, sir—at once, if you wish!” Tony had returned with cool insolence.
“Go? Where would you go, I’d like to know?” Sir Philip had flung at him sneeringly. And just to prove that he could and would go if he chose, and because he was filled with a wild spirit of revolt and anger, Tony had despatched a telegram to Ann and had quitted Lorne the very next day.
“He was insufferable!” he declared stormily. “Great Scott! Does the man think I’m a child to be cuffed into obedience? I warned him for his own sake he’d better never lay a finger on me!”
“He never would, Tony,” said Ann. “Of that I’m sure. He’s far too fond of you, for one thing.”
“No, I don’t suppose he would, really,” conceded Tony. “But when he flies into a rage, he hardly knows what he’s saying or doing. He’s got the Brabazon temper all right, the same as I’ve got the family love of gambling.”
“Oh, Tony, I wish you’d give it all up!” exclaimed Ann impulsively. And then the colour rushed hotly into her face as she recalled with sudden vividness the circumstances in which he had once offered to renounce every form of gambling.
Absorbed in the interests of the new life in which she found herself, the recollection of that moonlit night on the steep side of Roche d’Or had slipped into the background of her thoughts. Now it leaped abruptly into the forefront, and she felt helpless and constrained, unable to urge her appeal. The answer Tony could give back was so obvious.