He felt, too, with a sharper pang than he had ever felt it for himself, the brilliant beggary in which he lived, the utter inability he had to raise even the sum that the boy now needed; a sum so trifling, in his set, and with his habits, that he had betted it over and over again in a clubroom, on a single game of whist.

It cut him with a bitter, impatient pain; he was as generous as the winds, and there is no trial keener to such a temper than the poverty that paralyzes its power to give.
"It is no use to give you false hopes, young one," he said gently.

"I can do nothing! You ought to know me by this time; and if you do, you know too that if the money was mine it would be yours at a word--if you don't, no matter! Frankly, Berk, I am all down-hill; my bills may be called in any moment; when they are I must send in my papers to sell, and cut the country, if my duns don't catch me before, which they probably will; in which event I shall be to all intents and purposes--dead.

This is not lively conversation, but you will do me the justice to say that it was not I who introduced it.

Only--one word for all, my boy; understand this: if I could help you I would, cost what it might, but as matters stand--I cannot." 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.