“I have, Sir Gilbert. He is at my rooms at Elm Lodge. He is not at all well, and I have persuaded him to stay where he is till morning, in the hope that by then he will have thoroughly recovered.”
Sir Gilbert drew himself up to his full height and grasped the young man by one shoulder. “Lisle—um—um, you are trying to keep something from me,” he said. “There is something in the background which you do not wish me to know. If it concerns my grandson, I must know it, and I look to you to answer my questions with that candour which up to now I have found to be one of your unfailing attributes. Tell me this: did you find my grandson at Elm Lodge on your arrival there after leaving here?”
“No, sir, I did not.”
“Where did you find him?”
“I went in search of him and found him at a certain hotel in the town.”
“So—so. And the worse for drink, hey?”
“He certainly had imbibed a little more wine than was good for him.”
“I thought as much,” was Sir Gilbert’s stern rejoinder.
“This, perhaps, may be urged in extenuation, sir—that the occasion was a birthday-party—(Mr. Lewis was one among a lot more young men)—that he had had nothing to eat since breakfast, and that the very fact of his being unaccustomed to take much wine was the reason why what he had taken affected him as it did.”
“You would make excuses for him, would you? Leave him to do that for himself, if you please. And what is the class of young men whom he chooses for his associates? Nothing better than common riff-raff, I’ll be bound.” Then all at once his voice broke. “And it is of my grandson—the last of the Clares—that these things are being said!”