“I say, Burton,” said a fellow-passenger, “is this any relation of yours?” looking up from the paper he was reading.
“Eh? What is it?” Gervase asked, half-hearing. The passenger cast a hurried glance down the page and then said hastily——
“Oh, I beg your pardon! I see it can’t be;” and presently hurried away, carrying his paper with him.
Gervase did not give much importance to this quickly stifled query; but when another gentleman on board whom he knew approached him a little later on, and asked, with an exceedingly grave face, when he had last heard from his father, a sudden alarm sprang up in his mind.
“I have heard nothing for some weeks,” he said. “I have had to put off sailing for mail after mail before I could get my business done.”
“Oh,” said the other, “then you have had no news?”
“What is wrong with my father?” cried Gervase. “I see you know something. Is he ill?”
“I hope not; I hope not indeed. But I know absolutely nothing,” his old friend said.
These words made Gervase perfectly sure that something was known, something which he did not know; and it was then he remembered the careless exclamation of the other, “Can this be any relation of yours?” There must evidently be some record of trouble in the papers which nobody would venture to tell him. He hurried to the cabin and found a group there gathered round one who seemed expounding the matter to them. “I believe his son would not enter the office, so he was forced to take another partner—who seems to have brought him to ruin.”
“Is it the languid young man who is here?” asked another.