"
"Really it is hardly worth while. It is nearly eight o'clock, and I
don't know where your portmanteau was put. Shall I get you a book?"
"No; but if you'd get me a pen and ink, I want to write to mother."
Such a desire was not too frequent in Cecil, and Fordham was glad
enough to promote it, bringing in his own neat apparatus, with only a
mild entreaty that his favourite pen might be well treated, and the
sheets respected. He had written his own letter of explanation of
his first act of independence, and he looked with some wonder at his
brother's rapid writing, not without fear that some sudden pressure
for a foolish debt might have been the result of his tete-a-tete with
his dangerous friend. Cecil's letters were too apt to be requests
for money or confessions of debts, and if this were the case, what
would be Mrs. Evelyn's view of the conduct of the whole party in
disregarding her wishes?
Had he been with his mother, he would have probably been called into
consultation over the letter, but he was forced to remain without the
privilege here offered to the reader:—-
"Baden Hotel, Leukerbad, June 14.
"Dearest Mother,-—Duke has written about our falling in with the
Brownlows, and how pluckily Friar caught us up.
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