lost two hundred
to-night; I must pay it, or be disgraced forever; I have not a farthing;
I cannot get the money for my life; no Jews will lend to me, I am under
age; and--and"--his voice sank lower and grew more defiant, for he knew
that the sole thing forbidden him peremptorily by both his father and
his brothers was the thing he had now to tell--"and--I borrowed three
ponies of Granville Lee yesterday, as he came from the Corner with a lot
of banknotes after settling-day. I told him I would pay them to-morrow;
I made sure I should have won to-night."

The piteous unreason of the born gamester, who clings so madly to the
belief that luck must come to him, and sets on that belief as though a
bank were his to lose his gold from, was never more utterly spoken
in all its folly, in all its pitiable optimism, than now in the boy's
confession.

Bertie started from his chair, his sleepy languor dissipated; on his
face the look that had come there when Lord Royallieu had dishonored his
mother's name. In his code there was one shameless piece of utter and
unmentionable degradation--it was to borrow of a friend.

"You will bring some disgrace on us before you die, Berkeley," he said,
with a keener inflection of pain and contempt than had ever been in his
voice. "Have you no common knowledge of honor?"

The lad flushed under the lash of the words, but it was a flush of anger
rather than of shame; he did not lift his eyes, but gazed sullenly down
on the yellow paper of a Paris romance he was irritably dog-earing.

"You are severe enough," he said gloomily, and yet insolently. "Are you
such a mirror of honor yourself? I suppose my debts, at the worst, are
about one-fifth of yours."

For a moment even the sweetness of Cecil's temper almost gave way. Be
his debts what they would, there was not one among them to his friends,
or one for which the law could not seize him. He was silent; he did not
wish to have a scene of discussion with one who was but a child to him;
moreover, it was his nature to abhor scenes of any sort, and to avert
even a dispute, at any cost.

He came back and sat down without any change of expression, putting his
cheroot in his mouth.

"Tres cher, you are not courteous," he said wearily; "but it may be
that you are right. I am not a good one for you to copy from in anything
except the fit of my coats; I don't think I ever told you I was. I am
not altogether so satisfied with myself as to suggest myself a