But, by-and-by, when he perceived that it was possible to do so without much risk of detection, he began, on two or three afternoons a week, to find his way to the _King’s Head_ at Mapleford (being always careful to get back to the Chase in time for dinner), where was a billiard-room which was frequented by all the fast young men of the little town. There Luigi felt himself thoroughly at home; there his only happy hours were spent. He could handle a cue with some degree of proficiency, and, as the grandson of Sir Gilbert Clare and the prospective owner of Withington Chase, he took a certain social precedence over the other frequenters of the room. For the first time in his life he found himself flattered and made much of, and the sensation was an eminently agreeable one. But such company cannot be indulged in without a certain amount of expense, and it was a necessity of the position which had been so ungrudgingly accorded him that Luigi should spend his money with an air of careless liberality which was far from being native to him. Thus it fell out that what remained of the baronet’s fifty pounds, after Captain Verinder had borrowed five of it, and he had equipped himself with a limited supply of those articles which the latter assured him were absolutely indispensable to his new position, began, when once he had taken to frequenting the _King’s Head_, to melt away in a quite alarming fashion. As a consequence, he was presently compelled to apply to Giovanna for a loan of ten pounds, which, however, she refused to let him have till he had given her his solemn promise to repay her out of Sir Gilbert’s next cheque. At this time Luigi saw very little of Captain Verinder, or rather, the latter saw very little of him, although he more than once sent word through Giovanna that if it were not convenient for his nephew to meet him at Maylings, he had but to name his own time and place and the Captain would not fail to be there. But Luigi was never without an excuse of some kind for not making an appointment, and, indeed, exhibited a quite unaccountable reluctance to indulge in the pleasure of a _tête-a-tête_ with his uncle. What he told himself was, that he was his own master now, at least as far as Verinder was concerned, and wasn’t going to let himself be “preached at” by anybody: and that the Captain would preach at him, as he termed it, whenever they should come together, he felt fully assured. Besides, he had already discovered that his respected relative was possessed of a quite abnormal faculty for borrowing money, and having himself such a limited supply of that commodity, he was affectionately unwilling to subject his uncle to the pain of a refusal. “Ungrateful hound!” exclaimed the Captain one day in a rage to Giovanna. “Does he dream, after all I have done for him, that he is at liberty to cast me off like an old glove? I will teach him a different lesson from that before he is much older.” CHAPTER XXVIII. THE PROGRESS OF EVENTS