"I had been drinking. I am not going to tell a lie about it. But he needn't have done as he did. Faddle knows that, and can tell you." "What can have driven you to associate with such a young man as Faddle? That is the worst part of it. Do you know what Faddle and Company are,--stock jobbers, who ten years ago hadn't a thousand pounds in the way of capital among them! They've been connected with a dozen companies, none of which are floating now, and have made money out of them all! Do you think that Travers and Treason will accept a young man as a partner who associates with such people as that?" "I have seen old Faddle's name and yours on the same prospectus together, Sir." "What has that to do with it? You never saw him inside our counter. What a name to appear along with yours in such an affair as this! If it hadn't been for that, you might have got over it. Young men will be young men. Faddle! I think you will have to go abroad for a time, till it has been forgotten." "I should like to stay, just at present, Sir," said Tom. "What good can you do?" "All the same, I should like to stay, Sir." "I was thinking that, if you were to take a tour through the United States, go across to San Francisco, then up to Japan, and from thence through some of the Chinese cities down to Calcutta and Bombay, you might come back by the Euphrates Valley to Constantinople, see something of Bulgaria and those countries, and so home by Vienna and Paris. The Euphrates Valley Railway will be finished by that time, perhaps, and Bulgaria will be as settled as Hertfordshire. You'd see something of the world, and I could let it be understood that you were travelling on behalf of Travers and Treason. By the time that you were back, people in the City would have forgotten the policeman, and if you could manage to write home three or four letters about our trade with Japan and China, they would be willing to forget Faddle." "But, Sir--" "Shouldn't you like a tour of that kind?" "Very much indeed, Sir;--only--" "Only what, Tom?" "Ayala!" said Tom, hardly able to suppress a sob as he uttered the fatal name. "Tom, don't be a fool. You can't make a young woman have you if she doesn't choose. I have done all that I could for you, because I saw that you'd set your heart upon it. I went to her myself, and then I gave two hundred and fifty pounds for that bauble. I am told I shall have to lose a third of the sum in getting rid of it." "Ricolay told me that he'd take it back at two hundred and twenty," said Tom, whose mind, prostrate as it was, was still alive to consideration of profit and loss.