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.