e like a Duke, and don't care if I should die in a debtor's
prison! You only brag about 'honor' when you want to get out of helping
a fellow; and if I were to cut my throat to-night you would only shrug
your shoulders, and sneer at my death in the clubroom, with a jest
picked out of your cursed French novels!"

"Melodramatic, and scarcely correct," murmured Bertie.

The ingratitude to himself touched him indeed but little; he was not
given to making much of anything that was due to himself--partly through
carelessness, partly through generosity; but the absence in his brother
of that delicate, intangible, indescribable sensitive-nerve which men
call Honor, an absence that had never struck on him so vividly as it did
to-night, troubled him, surprised him, oppressed him.

There is no science that can supply this defect to the temperament
created without it; it may be taught a counterfeit, but it will never
own a reality.

"Little one, you are heated, and don't know what you say," he began very
gently, a few moments later, as he leaned forward and looked straight in
the boy's eyes. "Don't be down about this; you will pull through, never
fear. Listen to me; go down to Royal, and tell him all frankly. I know
him better than you; he will be savage for a second, but he would sell
every stick and stone on the land for your sake; he will see you
safe through this. Only bear one thing in mind--tell him all. No half
measures, no half confidences; tell him the worst, and ask his help. You
will not come back without it."

Berkeley listened; his eyes shunning his brother's, the red color darker
on his face.

"Do as I say," said Cecil, very gently still. "Tell him, if you like,
that it is through following my follies that you have come to grief; he
will be sure to pity you then."

There was a smile, a little sad, on his lips, as he said the last words,
but it passed at once as he added:

"Do your hear me? will you go?"

"If you want me--yes."

"On your word, now?"

"On my word."

There was an impatience in the answer, a feverish eagerness in the way
he assented that might have made the consent rather a means to evade the
pressure than a genuine pledge to follow the advice; that darker, more
evil, more defiant look was still upon his face, sweeping its youth
away and leaving in its stead a wavering shadow. He rose with a sudden
movement; his tumbled hair, his disordered attire, his bloodshot eyes,
his haggard look of sl