Why are you a recreant?'
'The House sits today.'
'How virtuous! Is it coming to that,--that when the House sits you
will never be absent?'
'That's the kind of life I'm going to lead. You haven't heard
about Gerald?'
'About your brother?'
'Yes;--you haven't heard?'
'Not a word. I hope there is not misfortune.'
'But indeed there is,--a most terrible misfortune.' Then he told
the whole story. How Gerald had been kept in London, and how he
had gone down to Cambridge,--all in vain; how his father had taken
the matter to heart, telling him that he had ruined his brother;
and how he, in consequence, had determined not to go to the races.
'Then he said,' continued Silverbridge, 'that his children between
them would bring him to his grave.'
'That was terrible.'
'Very terrible.'
'But what did he mean by that?' asked Lady Mabel, anxious to hear
something about Lady Mary and Tregear.
'Well; of course what I did at Oxford made him unhappy; and now
there is this affair of Gerald's.'
'He did not allude to your sister?'
'Yes he did.
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