"I think I should, nevertheless," he persisted, smiling. "Carus, you know that if you need money to bet with——"
"I'll tell you what I need, Sir Peter," said I, looking him in the eye. "I need your faith in me that I am not by choice a niggard."
"God forbid!" he cried.
"Yet I pass among many for that," I said hotly. "I know it, I suffer. Yet I can not burn a penny; it belongs to others, that's all."
"A debt!" he murmured.
"Call it as you will. The money you overpay me for my poor services is not even my own to enjoy."
Sir Peter dropped his bridle and slapped his gloved hands together with a noise that made his horse jump. "I knew it," he cried, "I knew it, and so I told Elsin when she came to me, troubled, because in you this one flaw appeared; yet though she questioned me, in the same breath she vowed the marble perfect, and asked me if you had parents or kin dependent. She is a rare maid, my pretty kinswoman—" He hesitated, glancing cornerwise at me.
"Do you know Walter Butler well?" I asked carelessly.
"No, only a little. Why, Carus?"
"Is he married?"