utably there are other things in the world, dear boy; but none
so much to my taste," said Cecil composedly, stretching himself with a
yawn. "With every regard to hospitality and the charms of your society,
might I hint that five o'clock in the morning is not precisely the most
suitable hour for social visits and ethical questions?"

"For God's sake, be serious, Bertie! I am the most miserable wretch in
creation."

Cecil opened his closed eyes, with the sleepy indifference vanished
from them, and a look of genuine and affectionate concern on the serene
insouciance of his face.

"Ah! you would stay and play that chicken hazard," he thought, but he
was not one who would have reminded the boy of his own advice and its
rejection; he looked at him in silence a moment, then raised himself
with a sigh.

"Dear boy, why didn't you sleep upon it? I never think of disagreeable
things till they wake me with my coffee; then I take them up with the
cup and put them down with it. You don't know how well it answers; it
disposes of them wonderfully."

The boy lifted his head with a quick, reproachful anger, and in the
gaslight his cheeks were flushed, his eyes full of tears.

"How brutal you are, Bertie! I tell you I am ruined, and you care no
more than if you were a stone. You only think of yourself; you only live
for yourself!"

He had forgotten the money that had been tossed to him off that very
table the day before the Grand Military; he had forgotten the debts that
had been paid for him out of the winnings of that very race. There is a
childish, wayward, wailing temper, which never counts benefits received
save as title-deeds by which to demand others. Cecil looked at him with
just a shadow of regret, not reproachful enough to be rebuke, in his
glance, but did not defend himself in any way against the boyish,
passionate accusation, nor recall his own past gifts into remembrance.

"'Brutal'! What a word, little one. Nobody's brutal now; you never see
that form nowadays. Come, what is the worst this time?"

Berkeley looked sullenly down on the table where his elbows leaned;
scattering the rose-notes, the French novels, the cigarettes, and the
gold essence-bottles with which it was strewn; there was something
dogged yet agitated, half-insolent yet half-timidly irresolute, upon
him, that was new there.

"The worst is soon told," he said huskily, and his teeth chattered
together slightly, as though with cold, as he spoke. "I