excitement had been his bread all day, and the wine warmed his heart to the strange man with whom he had been thrown in such dramatic contact. Better company, in happier circumstances, it would have been difficult to imagine; and it was clear that, with quip and anecdote, he was doing his utmost to amuse Harry and to take him out of his trouble. But to no purpose: the boy was perforce a bad listener, and at last confessed it in as many words.
"My mind is so full of my father," added Harry, "that I have hardly given my dear mother a thought; but my life is hers from to-day. You said she was in Kensington; in lodgings, I suppose?"
"No, in a flat. It's very small, but there's a room for you, and it's been ready for weeks."
"What is she living on?"
"Less than half her private income by marriage settlement; that was all there was left, and five-eighths of it she would insist on making over to the men who advanced the ten thousand. She is paying them two-and-a-half per cent. on their money and attempting to live on a hundred and fifty a year!"
"I'll double it before long!"
"Then she'll pay them five."
"They shall have every farthing one day; and the other creditors, they shall have their twenty shillings in the pound if I live long enough. Now let me have the rest of those cuttings. I want to know just how we stand – and what they say."
Out came the pocket-book once more. They were an hour's run nearer town when Harry spoke again.
"May I keep them?" he said.
"Surely."
"Thank you. I take it the bank's all right – and thank God the other liabilities up there are not large. As to the flight with that ten thousand – I don't believe it yet. There has been foul play. You mark my words."
Lowndes looked out at the flying fields.
"Which of you saw him last?" continued Harry.
"Your mother, when he left for town."
"When was that?"
"The morning after Good Friday."
"When did he cross?"
"That night."
"Did he write to anybody?"
"Not that I know of."
"Not to my mother?"
Lowndes leant forward across the compartment: there was a shrewd look in the spectacled eyes.
"Not that I know of," he said again, but with a different intonation. "I have often wondered!"
"Did you ask her?"
"Yes; she said not."
"Then what do you mean?" cried Harry indignantly. "Do you think my mother would tell you a lie?"
"Your mother is the most loyal little woman in England," was the reply. "I certainly think that she would keep her end up in the day of battle."
Harry ground his teeth. He could have struck the florid able face whose every look showed a calm assumption of his father's infamy.
"You take it all for granted!" he fumed; "you, who say you were his friend. How am I to believe in such friendship? True friends are not so ready to believe the worst. Oh! it makes my blood boil to hear you talk; it makes me hate myself for accepting kindness at your hands. You have been very kind, I know," added Harry in a breaking voice; "but – but for God's sake don't let us speak about it any more!" And he flung up a newspaper to hide his quivering lips; for now he was hoping against hope and believing against belief.
Was it not in black and white in all the papers? How could it be otherwise than true? Rightly or wrongly, the world had found his father guilty; and was he to insult all and sundry who failed to repudiate the verdict of the world?
Harry was one who could not endure to be in the wrong with anybody: his weakness in every quarrel was an incongruous hankering for the good opinion of the enemy, and this was intensified in the case of one who was obviously anxious to be his friend. To appear ungracious or ungrateful was equally repugnant to Harry Ringrose, and no sooner was he master of his emotion than he lowered the paper in order to add a few words which should remove any such impression.
Gordon Lowndes sat dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief that he made haste to put away, as though it was his eyes he had been wiping, which indeed was Harry's first belief. But the gold-rimmed glasses were not displaced, and, so far from a tear, there was an expression behind them for which Harry could not then find the name; nevertheless, it made him hold his tongue after all.
CHAPTER IV
THE NEW HOME
Harry had hoped that his companion would go his own way when they got to London; but it was "his funeral," as Mr. Lowndes kept saying, and he seemed determined to conduct it to the end. Euston was crowded, where Lowndes behaved like a man in his element, dealing abuse and largesse with equal energy and freedom, and getting Harry and all his boxes off in the first cab which left the station. But he himself was at Harry's side; and there he sat until the cab stopped, half-an-hour later, beneath a many-windowed red-brick pile thrown up in the angle of two back streets.
A porter in uniform ran up to help with the luggage, and, as Harry jumped out, a voice with a glad sob in it hailed him from a first-floor window. He waved his hat, and, with a pang, saw a white head vanishing: it had not been white when he went away. Next moment he was flying up the stone stairs three at a time; and on the first landing, at an open door, there was the sweet face, all aged and lined and lighted with sorrow and shame and love; there were the softest arms in all the world, spread wide to catch and clasp him to the warmest heart.
It was a long time afterwards, in a room which made the old furniture look very big, the old pictures very sad, that Mr. Lowndes was remembered for the first time. They looked into the narrow passage: the boxes blocked it, but he was not there; they called, but there was no answer.
"Have we no servant, mother?"
"We have no room for one. The porter's wife comes up and helps me."
"I can help you! Many a meal have I cooked in Africa."
"My boy, what a home-coming!"
It was the first word about that, and with it came the first catch in Harry's mother's voice.
"No, mother, thank God I am back to take care of you; and oh! I am so thankful we are to be alone to-night."
"But I am sorry he did not come in."
"He was quite right not to."
"But he must have paid for the cab – I will look out of the window – yes, it has gone – and I had the money ready in case you forgot!"
Harry could have beaten himself, but he could not tell his mother just then that he had arrived without a penny, and that Lowndes had not only paid the cabman, but must be pounds out of pocket by him on the day.
"Don't you like him, dear?" said his mother, divining that he did not.
"I do and I don't," said Harry bluntly.
"He has been so kind to me!"
"Yes;
