Although I was embarrassed, I took courage to intimate that I still wished to pursue the subject.

“I should think it a mistake,” said Mr. Skimpole with his airy laugh, “if I thought Miss Summerson capable of making one.  But I don’t!”

“Mr. Skimpole,” said I, raising my eyes to his, “I have so often heard you say that you are unacquainted with the common affairs of life—­”

“Meaning our three banking-house friends, L, S, and who’s the junior partner?  D?” said Mr. Skimpole, brightly.  “Not an idea of them!”

“—­That perhaps,” I went on, “you will excuse my boldness on that account.  I think you ought most seriously to know that Richard is poorer than he was.”

“Dear me!” said Mr. Skimpole.  “So am I, they tell me.”

“And in very embarrassed circumstances.”

“Parallel case, exactly!” said Mr. Skimpole with a delighted countenance.

“This at present naturally causes Ada much secret anxiety, and as I think she is less anxious when no claims are made upon her by visitors, and as Richard has one uneasiness always heavy on his mind, it has occurred to me to take the liberty of saying that—­if you would—­not—­”

I was coming to the point with great difficulty when he took me by both hands and with a radiant face and in the liveliest way anticipated it.

“Not go there?  Certainly not, my dear Miss Summerson, most assuredly not.  Why should I go there?  When I go anywhere, I go for pleasure.  I don’t go anywhere for pain, because I was made for pleasure.  Pain comes to me when it wants me.  Now, I have had very little pleasure at our dear Richard’s lately, and your practical sagacity demonstrates why.  Our young friends, losing the youthful poetry which was once so captivating in them, begin to think, ’This is a man who wants pounds.’  So I am; I always want pounds; not for myself, but because tradespeople always want them of me.  Next, our young friends begin to think, becoming mercenary, ’This is the man who had pounds, who borrowed them,’ which I did.  I always borrow pounds.  So our young friends, reduced to prose (which is much to be regretted), degenerate in their power of imparting pleasure to me.  Why should I go to see them, therefore?  Absurd!”

Through the beaming smile with which he regarded me as he reasoned thus, there now broke forth a look of disinterested benevolence quite astonishing.

“Besides,” he said, pursuing his argument in his tone of light-hearted conviction, “if I don’t go anywhere for pain—­which would be a perversion of the intention of my being, and a monstrous thing to do—­why should I go anywhere to be the cause of pain?  If I went to see our young friends in their present ill-regulated state of mind, I should give them pain.  The associations with me would be disagreeable.  They might say, ’This is the man who had pounds and who can’t pay pounds,’ which I can’t, of course; nothing could be more out of the question!  Then kindness requires that I shouldn’t go near them—­and I won’t.”