"You mean the debtors--or those above in the chain-room?" he asked, surprised.
"I was not speaking of the Bridewell, but of the Prison," I said.
"What cruelty, Carus? You mean the rigor Cunningham uses?"
"Rigor!" I said, laughing, and my laugh was unpleasant.
He looked at me narrowly. We rode past Warren Street and the Upper Barracks in silence, saluting an officer here and there with preoccupied punctiliousness. Already I was repenting of my hardiness in mixing openly with politics or war--matters I had ever avoided or let pass with gay indifference.
"Carus," he said, patting his horse's mane, "you will lay a bet for the honor of the family this time--will you not?"
"I have no money," I replied, surprised; for never before had he offered to suggest an interference into my own affairs--never by word or look.
"No money!" he repeated, laughing. "Gad, you rake, what do you do with it all?" And as I continued silent, he said more gravely, "May I speak plainly to a kinsman and dear friend?"
"Always," I said uneasily.
"Then, without offense, Carus, I think that, were I you, I should bet a little--now and again--fling the guineas for a change--now and then--if I were you, Carus."
"If you were I you would not," I said, reddening to the temples.
"I think I should, nevertheless," he persisted, smiling. "Carus, you know that if you need money to bet with----"
"I'll tell you what I need, Sir Peter," said I, looking him in the eye. "I need your faith in me that I am not by choice a niggard."
"God forbid!" he cried.
"Yet I pass among many for that," I said hotly. "I know it, I suffer. Yet I can not burn a penny; it belongs to others, that's all."
"A debt!" he murmured.
"Call it as you will. The money you overpay me for my poor services is not even my own to enjoy."
Sir Peter dropped his bridle and slapped his gloved hands together with a noise that made his horse jump. "I knew it," he cried, "I knew it, and so I told Elsin when she came to me, troubled, because in you this one flaw appeared; yet though she questioned me, in the same breath she vowed the marble perfect, and asked me if you had parents or kin dependent. She is a rare maid, my pretty kinswoman--" He hesitated, glancing cornerwise at me.