"I shall like that," he spoke sincerely. "I'm rather tired of London life—a little rest will do me good. It's so nice of you to wish to have me."
He sipped the glass of sweet liqueur he held with a sudden secret craving for a good strong brandy and soda to steady his quivering nerves.
For the reaction was coming on. Beneath his armour of wounded pride a sense of loss was stabbing him.
He did not close his eyes that night.
CHAPTER XVIII
Meanwhile, under grey skies, in a gloomy room near Primrose Hill, another young man faced (with dismay) a definite tide in his affairs.
He sat in a shabby dressing-gown before a table covered with papers, sorted now in grim piles of unpaid bills, reading a writ.
Stephen Somerfield stared at it, his weak good-looking face drawn into lines of hopeless disgust.
"It's a deuce of a mess!" So he summed it up. "What an unlucky beggar I am!—I thought it was pretty bad, but this"—he threw down the document—"is the limit!"