"Thanks, awfully, but I don't need it," Victor interrupted, with a stroke of inspiration. "My income keeps me going all right. It is only in trifles that I am extravagant. I have inherited a taste, sir, for good cigars and old brandy."
"You dog, of course you have. Your maternal grandfather was noted for his wine cellar, and he bought his Havanas by the thousand from Fribourg and Treyer. That I should prefer cheroots is rank degeneracy. But I must be off, or I shall get no sleep. I won't ask you to come down to the dock in the morning—"
"But I insist upon coming, sir."
"Then breakfast with me at Morley's—nine o'clock sharp."
Uncle and nephew parted on the best of terms, but Sir Lucius was not altogether easy in mind as he walked down Regent street, tapping the now deserted pavement with his stick.
"I hope the boy is trustworthy," he thought. "He has some excuse for recklessness and extravagance, but none for dishonor. I told him the name of Chesney was unsullied—I forgot for a moment. It is strange that Mary should be so much in my mind lately. Poor girl! Perhaps I was too harsh with her. I wonder if she is still alive—if she has a son. But if she came to me this moment, I could not forgive her. Nearly thirty years have not softened me."
He sighed heavily as he entered Trafalgar Square, and to a wretched woman with an infant in her arms, crouching under the shadow of the Nelson Column, he tossed a silver piece.