He made a memorandum of the date in his tablets; and after a little further talk, he shook hands with Lionel and went, leaving the two cousins together.
Kester looked after him with a sneer. “There goes another gilded fool,” he said.
“I thought you introduced him to me as your particular friend,” said Lionel.
“I called him my particular friend because he is rich. I can’t afford to call any poor man my friend.”
“My reason for inviting him to Park Newton was partly because I thought it would please you to have him there at the same time as yourself, and partly out of compliment to his brother, whom I respect and like exceedingly.”
“Don’t mistake me. I am glad you have asked him down to the old place. As I said before, he is rich, and some day or other he may be useful to me. All the same, he’s an awful screw, and thinks as much of one sovereign as I do of five.”
“How long have you known him?” asked Lionel.
“For a dozen years at the least. When he was twenty-one he came in for a fortune of twelve thousand pounds. This he contrived to get through very comfortably in the course of a couple of seasons. Then came the climax. For two years longer he managed to pick up a precarious crust among the different friends and acquaintances whom he had made during his more prosperous days. Then, when everybody had become thoroughly tired of him, he crossed the Atlantic. For the next four years he was lost sight of utterly. When heard of again, he had sunk to the position of marker in a billiard-saloon at New Orleans. After that, he was heard of in several places, but always in dreadfully low water. Then came the story of a murder in which he was said to be somehow mixed up, but nobody on this side seemed ever to get at the truth about it; and the next thing we heard about him was something altogether different. An old maiden aunt had died and had left the scapegrace eighty thousand pounds. Such as you saw him to-day, he turned up in London three months ago. Bitter experience has taught him the value of money. Still he has his weaknesses. What those weaknesses are it is my business just now to find out.”
CHAPTER X.
MASTER AND MAN.
“Shall I shut the window, sir? The evening is rather cold.”