"There! see what you made me do. My luck! Now we can't talk without those brutes at that open window, over the way, hearing every word we say. By Jove, it is later than I thought! I did not sleep last night." "Nor I, a moment," said Van. "It seems like a week since that accursed race, and I don't know whether it is morning or evening, or day or night. It is past four, and I must dress and go to my uncle--he said five. Don't leave me, Van, old fellow! I think I should cut my throat if I were alone." "Oh, no, I'll stay with pleasure, although I don't see what comfort there is in me, for I am about the most miserable dog in London." "Now don't make a fool of yourself any more," said Richard Arden. "You have only to tell your aunt, and say that you are a prodigal son, and that sort of thing, and it will be paid in a week. I look as if I was going to be hanged--or is it the colour of that glass? I hate it. I'll leave these cursed lodgings. Did you ever see such a ghost?" "Well, you do look a trifle seedy: you'll look better when you're dressed. It's an awful world to live in," said poor Van. "I'll not be five minutes; you must walk with me a bit of the way. I wish I had some fellow at my other side who had lost a hundred thousand. I daresay he'd think me a fool. They say Chiffington lost a hundred and forty thousand. Perhaps he'd think me as great an ass as I think you--who knows? I may be making too much of it--and my uncle is so very rich, and neither wife nor child; and, I give you my honour, I am sick of the whole thing. I'd never take a card or a dice-box in my hand, or back a horse, while I live, if I was once fairly out of it. He _might_ try me, don't you think? I'm the only near relation he has on earth--I don't count my father, for he's--it's a different thing, you know--I and my sister, just. And, really, it would be nothing to him. And I think he suspected something about it last night; perhaps he heard a little of it. And he's rather hot, but he's a good-natured fellow, and he has commercial ideas about a man's going into the insolvent court; and, by Jove, you know, I'm ruined, and I don't think he'd like to see our name disgraced--eh, do you?" "No, I'm quite sure," said Van. "I thought so all along." "Peers and peeresses are very fine in their way, and people, whenever the peers do anything foolish, and throw out a bill, exclaim 'Thank Heaven we have still a House of Lords!' but you and I, Van, may thank Heaven for a better estate, the order of aunts and uncles. Do you remember the man you and I saw in the vaudeville, who exclaims every now and then, '_Vive mon oncle! Vive ma tante!_'?" So, in better spirits, Arden prepared to visit his uncle.