"What nonsense!" ejaculated Georgina, pushing back her bonnet from her flaming cheeks. "As if he would go off to London in that manner! I have come to tell you about him, Mr. St. John. He had no one to trust, and so he trusted me. He could not send a letter to await you, lest Mrs. St. John should open it. He is at the Barley Mow all this time; a prisoner." "A what!" exclaimed Mr. St. John. "He was arrested yesterday morning. I saw it done, but I did not understand it then. It's a horrible man in a great high hat, and he has got him at the Barley Mow, until you release him." Isaac St. John sank into a seat, in his pain--his consternation. Living always completely out of the world, never having been brought into contact with its rubs and crosses, a thing of this nature was calculated to shock him in scarcely a less degree than it had shocked the young girl before him, who stood there looking at him with her large grey-blue eyes. "Arrested!" he murmured. "Frederick!" "You will go and release him, won't you?" said Georgina, anxiously. "It is a great deal of money; he told me it was some hundreds; but you will pay it for him?" "Yes, I will pay it," replied Mr. St. John, speaking as one lost in thought. "How came he to tell _you_ about it, Georgina?" "Oh, I went and saw him there. I guessed what had happened; there's no time to tell you how; and I went. I promised to keep his counsel. He is in a fever lest Mrs. St. John should get to know it." "And you will keep it, my dear!" cried Mr. St. John, seizing her hand and speaking in imploring accents. "It is a cruel disgrace for a St. John." "Trust me; trust me ever," was the girl's earnest answer, as she said a word of farewell and stole away. Little more than an hour later, Frederick St. John was sitting in that same room with his brother--a free man. He was disclosing to him the _whole_ of his embarrassments; which he had not done previously. Not disclosing them altogether willingly, but of necessity; for Mr. St. John's questionings were searching. The more Frederick told, the more amazed grew Isaac St. John; it may be said the more utterly astounded and angry. He had never himself been exposed to the temptations that beset a young man of position on entering the world, and he judged them in by no means a tolerant spirit. "Frederick, I could not have believed that any human being, gifted with reasoning faculties, had been guilty of such extravagance!" "The money seems to have melted. _I_ had no idea it was diminishing so fast." "It has been recklessness, not simple extravagance." Frederick St. John was seated at the table opposite his brother, one elbow leaning on it, the hand of the other playing with the seal attached to his watch-chain. The attitude, the voice, the bearing altogether, seemed to display a carelessness; and it vexed Mr. St. John. "How has the money gone? Is it of any use my asking?"