CHAPTER III.
“He said, and stalk’d away.”
Dodsley.
When the Earl of Trimmerstone and his good friend, Mr. Singleton Sloper, arrived at the house of the former, his lordship ushered his friend into his own apartment, and requested him to be seated. Sloper thought that the Earl had locked the door; but in that suspicion he was wrong: the thought, however, staggered and perplexed him. With as much indifference as he could assume, his lordship said:—
“Sloper, do you know any thing of that young man that we lost our money to last night? I am of opinion that he is not quite so young and inexperienced as you imagined him to be. How came you acquainted with him?”
His lordship watched Sloper’s countenance very narrowly, while he replied:
“He was introduced to me by that Tippetson, who is paying court to Mr. Martindale’s foreign grand-daughter. I was as much deceived in him as you were. Tippetson told me that he was quite young, and had just stepped into a very pretty fortune, and that he seemed very well disposed to enter into gaiety.”