“No, I will not do that,” returned the uncle’s heir, who was rapidly losing his patience. “There is your own allowance, a most liberal one.” “I have not drawn it because I thought Uncle Dan’s cheque covered everything.” “And it seems that you were too sanguine.” “What have you got in your cash-box, Waring?” he demanded sternly. “Do you mean to tell me seriously that you are quite penniless?” “No, I’ve got a thousand rupees; that will pay the servants here, take me to Simla, and keep me there quietly, till events arrange themselves. I cannot pay my mess bill in Shirani--a whopping one! You see, I punished their champagne, and I was always asking guests.” A dead silence, broken only by the jingling bit of Jervis’s impatient pony. “Well, what do you propose to do to get me out of this hat? How are we both to get out of the country?” inquired Clarence, whose effrontery was of a rare and peculiar character. Jervis sat for some time with his hands in his pockets and a frown on his brow. At last he said-- “I suppose, if the worst comes to the worst, I must draw out six hundred pounds, though I think it’s a mean encroachment on the old man’s generosity. One hundred will keep me here till we start, and the remaining five will pay mess bill, rent, passage money, and so on. I shall tell the Brandes the truth the first time I see them, and that will be to-morrow morning.” “Then, by George! if you do,” cried Clarence in a harsh, discordant voice, “you need not trouble about _my_ passage home, for as sure as you open your lips”--tugging furiously at the table-drawer as he spoke--“and expose me as a wretched impostor, a paid companion, and a beggar--do you see this revolver?” suddenly producing one as he spoke--“I swear I’ll put it to my head and blow my brains out! Here!” he continued, snatching up Mark’s little Prayer-book and kissing it vehemently, “I swear it on the book!” Then he pushed away both book and weapon, and, resting his elbows on the table, contemplated his _vis-à-vis_ with a grey, drawn, haggard face--a face expressing such anxiety and desperation, that it was difficult to believe that it was the countenance of good-looking, popular, _débonnaire_ Captain Waring. “I don’t want to drive you to anything,” said Mark, who was also deadly pale; “but if I keep my lips sealed and continue to feel a mean, double-faced hound, I must have _my_ stipulation also. It is not for the sake of any extra consideration or popularity I might gain that I wish to speak--you believe _that_? But you know I am deliberately playing a double part, and sailing under false colours. It all seemed so easy and harmless at first, from sending off the valet and baggage and----” “All that sort of thing, as Sir Gloster would say,” interrupted Clarence, with a ribald laugh.