“Not a case for a hospital, ma’am,” said Mr. Scunthorpe. “More likely to be screwed up.”

This pronouncement, conjuring up the most horrid vision of a coffin, almost deprived Arabella of her senses. Her eyes started at Mr. Scunthorpe in a look of painful enquiry. “Screwed up?” she repeated faintly.

“The Fleet,” corroborated Mr. Scunthorpe, sadly shaking his head. “Told him how it would be. Wouldn’t listen. Mind, if the thing had come off right, he could have paid down his dust, and no harm done. Trouble was, it didn’t. Very rarely does, if you ask me.”

The gist of this speech, gradually penetrating to Arabella’s understanding, brought some of the colour back to her face. She sank into a chair, her legs trembling violently, and said. “Do you mean he is in debt?”

Mr. Scunthorpe looked at her in mild surprise. “Told you so, ma’am!” he pointed out.

“Good God, how could I possibly guess—? Oh, I have been so afraid that something of the sort must happen! Thank you for coming to me, sir! You did very right!”

Mr. Scunthorpe blushed. “Always happy to be of service!”

“I must go to him!” Arabella said. “Will you be so kind as to escort me? I do not care to take my maid on such an errand, and I think perhaps I should not go alone.”

“No, wouldn’t do at all,” Mr. Scunthorpe agreed. “But better not go, ma’am! Not the thing for you. Delicate female—shabby neighbourhood! Take a message.”

“Nonsense! Do you think I have never been to the City? Only wait until I have fetched a bonnet, and a shawl! We may take a hackney, and be there before Lady Bridlington comes downstairs.”

“Yes, but—Fact is, ma’am, he ain’t at the Red Lion!” said Mr. Scunthorpe, much disturbed.

She had sprung up from her chair, but at this she paused. “Not? But how is this? Why has he left the inn?”

“Couldn’t pay his shot,” explained Mr. Scunthorpe apologetically. “Left his watch. Silly thing to do. Might have come in useful.”

“Oh!” she cried out, horror in her voice. “Is it as bad as that?”

“Worse!” said Mr. Scunthorpe gloomily. “Got queered sporting his blunt on the table. Only hadn’t enough blunt. Took to signing vowels, and ran aground.”

“Gaming!” Arabella breathed, in a shocked voice.

“Faro,” said Mr. Scunthorpe. “Mind, no question of any Greeking transactions! No fuzzing, or handling the concave-suit! Not but what it makes it worse, because a fellow has to be dashed particular in all matters of play and pay, if he goes to the Nonesuch. All the go, I assure you: Corinthian club—best of good ton! They play devilish high there—above my touch!”

“Then it was not you who took him to such a place!”

“Couldn’t have been,” said Mr. Scunthorpe simply. “Not a member. Chuffy Wivenhoe.”

“Lord Wivenhoe! Oh, what a fool I have been!” cried Arabella. “It was I who made him known to Lord Wivenhoe!”

“Pity,” said Mr. Scunthorpe, shaking his head.

“But how wicked of him to have led Bertram to such a place! Oh, how could he have done so? I had no suspicion—I thought him so agreeable, and gentlemanlike—!”

“Polite to a point,” agreed Mr. Scunthorpe. “Very good sort of a man: very well-liked. Daresay he did it for the best.”

“How could he think so?” Arabella said hotly.

“Very exclusive club,” he pointed out.

She said impatiently. “It is of no use for us to argue on that head. Where is Bertram?”

“Don’t think you’d know the place, ma’am. It’s—it’s near Westminster!”

“Very well, let us go there at once!”

In considerable agitation, Mr. Scunthorpe said: “No, dash it! Can’t take a lady to Willow Walk! You don’t quite understand, ma’am! Poor Bertram—couldn’t pay his shot—not a meg on him—duns in his pocket—tipstaffs after him—had to give ’em all the bag! Can’t quite make out exactly how it was, but think he must have gone back to the Red Lion when he left the Nonesuch, because he has his portmanteau with him. Seems to have bolted for it to Tothill Fields. Very low back-slum, ma’am. Silly fellow ought to have come and knocked me up—happy to have given him my sofa!”

“Good God, why did he not?”

He coughed in an embarrassed way. “Might have been a little bit on the go,” he said diffidently. “Scared of being pounded by the tipstaffs, too. Come to think of it, might easily be if he stayed with me. Dashed tradesmen know he’s a friend of mine! At all events, he ain’t with me—didn’t send me word where he was till this morning—feeling too blue-devilled, I daresay. Don’t blame him: would myself!”

“Oh, poor Bertram, poor Bertram!” she cried, wringing her hands. “I do not care where he is, see him I must, if I have to go to this Willow Walk alone!”

“Good God, ma’am, mustn’t do that!” he exclaimed, appalled. “Very rough set of coves in Willow Walk! Besides—” He paused, looking acutely uncomfortable. “Not quite himself!”

“Oh, he must be ill with worry, and despair! Nothing would keep me from him at such a time! I will fetch my bonnet, and we may be off directly!”

“Ma’am, he won’t like it!” Mr. Scunthorpe said desperately. “Very likely be ready to murder me only for telling you! You can’t see him!”

“Why can I not?”

“He’s been in the sun a trifle! You see—very understandable thing to do!—shot the cat!”

“Shot the cat?”

“Can’t blame him!” Mr. Scunthorpe pleaded. “Wouldn’t have told you, if you hadn’t been so set on seeing him! Felt balls of fire—result, looking as queer as Dick’s hatband, when I saw him!”

“Do you mean that he has been drinking?” demanded Arabella. “What, in heaven’s name, is a ball of fire?”

“Brandy,” said Mr. Scunthorpe. “Devilish bad brandy too. Told him to make Blue Ruin the preferred suit. Safer.”

“Every word you say makes me the more determined to go to him!” declared Arabella.

“Assure you much better to send him some blunt, ma’am!”

“I will take him all I have, but oh, it is so little! I cannot think yet what is to be done!”

Mr. Scunthorpe looked a little thoughtful. “In that case, ma’am, better take you to him. Talking very wildly this morning. No saying what he might do.”

Mr. Scunthorpe pointed significantly to the ceiling. “You don’t think the old lady—?” he suggested delicately.

She shook her head. “Oh, no, no! Impossible!”

She almost ran to the door. “We have not a moment to waste, then!”

“No, no!” he assured her. “No need to be on the fret! Won’t cut his throat today! Told the girl to hide his razor.”

“What girl?”

He became very much confused, blushed, and uttered: “Girl he sent to my lodging with a message. Been looking after him.”

“Oh, God bless her!” Arabella cried fervently. “What is her name? How much I must owe her!”

As the lady in question had introduced herself to Mr. Scunthorpe as LeakyPeg, he was obliged to take refuge in prevarication, and to hope devoutly that they would not encounter her in Willow Walk. He said that he had not caught her name. Arabella seemed a little disappointed, but since this was no time for wasting over trifles she said no more, but ran out of the room to fetch her bonnet and shawl. It was impossible for her to leave the house without the butler’s being aware of it, but although he looked surprised, he made no comment, and in a few minutes’ time she and Mr. Scunthorpe were seated in a ramshackle hackney coach, which seemed as though, many years before, it had formed part of a nobleman’s equipage, but which had fallen into sad decay. The coverings to the seats and the squabs were tattered and dirty, and the vehicle smelled strongly of beer and old leather. These evils Arabella scarcely noticed, in such a turmoil was her mind. It was a struggle to support her spirits at all; she felt ready to sink; and was unable, while in such a state of agitation, to form any plan for Bertram’s relief. The only solution which had so far presented itself to her mind was an instinctive impulse, no sooner thought of than recoiled from, to send off an express to Heythram. Mr. Scunthorpe’s suggestion of applying to Lady Bridlington she well knew to be useless, nor would her pride tolerate the putting of herself under such added obligation to her godmother. Wild notions of selling Mama’s diamonds, and the pearl necklet that had belonged to Grandma Tallant, could not, she knew, be entertained, for these trinkets were not hers to dispose of at will.

Beside her, Mr. Scunthorpe, feeling vaguely that her spirits required support, tried to entertain her by pointing out, conscientiously, the various places of interest the hackney drove past. She scarcely heeded him, but when they reached Westminster, began to look about her a little, insensibly cheered by the respectability of the neighbourhood. But the hackney lumbered on, and in a surprisingly short space of time it was hard to realize that she must be within a stone’s throw of the Abbey, so squalid were her surroundings. An unlucky attempt made by Mr. Scunthorpe to divert her, by pointing out an ugly brick structure which he said was the Tothill Fields Bridewell, made her shudder so alarmingly that he hastily informed her that it was so crammed to overflowing with felons that there was no room for another soul behind its walls. A row of squat alms-houses was the next object of interest to be seen. This was followed by a charity school, but the district seemed to Arabella to be largely composed of wretched hovels, ancient mansions, fallen into depressing decay, and a superfluity of taverns. Frowsy looking women stood in the doorways of some of the hovels; half-naked urchins turned cartwheels on the dirty cobbles, in the hope of gaining largesse from persons well-breeched enough to travel in hackney coaches; at one corner, a fat woman seated behind an iron cauldron appeared to be dispensing tea to a curiously ill-assorted crowd of persons, ranging from bricklayers to bedizened young women; various street-cries echoed in the narrow streets, from offers of coal to entreaties for old iron; and the male population seemed to consist entirely of scavengers, sweeps, and unidentifiable persons with blue jowls, and mufflers round their necks in place of collars.