“Good God!” muttered Nick, under his breath. “Flood is in love with the girl here.”
“Of my son Harry,” continued the rector, “who of late has been much absent from me while in college—ah, it breaks my heart, as it would that of his loving sister, to know that he places among his friends a man of your calling.”
“This is the deception to which you refer, Doctor Royal?”
“To what else, sir? I cannot forget that it was my dear boy who brought you here, and only to-day, when I had begun to regard you with almost brotherly affection, have you voluntarily told me the truth. You were represented to me to be in the ivory business. Alas! I now can see the significance of that. But I had all faith in my son, and looked for no such duplicity.”
“Naturally not,” said Flood simply.
“You have been a frequent visitor here, and have won the esteem of all my house, and God only knows how pained I am to learn the truth that must forever sever our friendship.”
There were tears in the rector’s aged eyes, but Flood never moved nor changed.
“May not a gamester be a true friend?” he asked gravely.
“Not a worthy one—never!”
“You feel sure of that?”