And with that Cecil puffed a great cloud of smoke to envelope him; the subject was painful, the denial wounded him by whom it had to be given full as much as it could wound him whom it refused. Berkeley heard it in silence; his head still hung down, his color changing, his hands nervously playing with the bouquet-bottles, shutting and opening their gold tops.
"No--yes--I know," he said hurriedly; "I have no right to expect it, and have been behaving like a cur, and--and--all that, I know. But--there is one way you could save me, Bertie, if it isn't too much for a fellow to ask."
"I can't say I see the way, little one," said Cecil, with a sigh. "What is it?"
"Why--look here. You see I'm not of age; my signature is of no use; they won't take it; else I could get money in no time on what must come to me when Royal dies; though 'tisn't enough to make the Jews 'melt' at a risk. Now--now--look here. I can't see that there could be any harm in it. You are such chums with Lord Rockingham, and he's as rich as all the Jews put together. What could there be in it if you just asked him to lend you a monkey for me? He'd do it in a minute, because he'd give his head away to you--they all say so--and he'll never miss it. Now, Bertie--will you?"
In his boyish incoherence and its disjointed inelegance the appeal was panted out rather than spoken; and while his head drooped and the hot color burned in his face, he darted a swift look at his brother, so full of dread and misery that it pierced Cecil to the quick as he rose from his chair and paced the room, flinging his cheroot aside; the look disarmed the reply that was on his lips, but his face grew dark.
"What you ask is impossible," he said briefly. "If I did such a thing as that, I should deserve to be hounded out of the Guards to-morrow."
The boy's face grew more sullen, more haggard, more evil, as he still bent his eyes on the table, his glance not meeting his brother's.
"You speak as if it would be a crime," he muttered savagely, with a plaintive moan of pain in the tone; he thought himself cruelly dealt with and unjustly punished.
"It would be the trick of a swindler, and it would be the shame of a gentleman," said Cecil, as briefly still. "That is answer enough."