Then they sat down and dined, and Augustus Scarborough made himself agreeable.  The small dinner was excellent of its kind, and the wine was all that it ought to be.  During dinner not a word was said as to Mountjoy, nor as to the affairs of the estate.  Augustus, who was old for his age, and had already practised himself much in London life, knew well how to make himself agreeable.  There was plenty to be said while young Pitcher was passing in and out of the room, so that there appeared no awkward vacancies of silence while one course succeeded the other.  The weather was very hot, the grouse were very tempting, everybody was very dull, and members of Parliament more stupid than anybody else; but a good time was coming.  Would Harry come down to Tretton and see the old governor?  There was not much to offer him in the way of recreation, but when September came the partridges would abound.  Harry gave a half-promise that he would go to Tretton for a week, and Augustus Scarborough expressed himself as much gratified.  Harry at the moment thought of no reason why he should not go to Tretton, and thus committed himself to the promise; but he afterward felt that Tretton was of all places the last which he ought just at present to visit.

At last Pitcher and the cheese were gone, and young Scarborough produced his cigars.  “I want to smoke directly I’ve done eating,” he said.  “Drinking goes with smoking as well as it does with eating, so there need be no stop for that.  Now, tell me, Annesley, what is it that you think about Mountjoy?”

There was an abruptness in the question which for the moment struck Harry dumb.  How was he to say what he thought about Mountjoy Scarborough, even though he should have no feeling to prevent him from expressing the truth?  He knew, or thought that he knew, Mountjoy Scarborough to be a thorough blackguard; one whom no sense of honesty kept from spending money, and who was now a party to robbing his creditors without the slightest compunction,—­for it was in Harry’s mind that Mountjoy and his father were in league together to save the property by rescuing it from the hands of the Jews.  He would have thought the same as to the old squire,—­only that the old squire had not interfered with him in reference to Florence Mountjoy.

And then there was present to his mind the brutal attack which had been made on himself in the street.  According to his views Mountjoy Scarborough was certainly a blackguard; but he did not feel inclined quite to say so to the brother, nor was he perfectly certain as to his host’s honesty.  It might be that the three Scarboroughs were all in a league together; and if so, he had done very wrong, as he then remembered, to say that he would go down to Tretton.  When, therefore, he was asked the question he could only hold his tongue.

“I suppose you have some scruple in speaking because he’s my brother?  You may drop that altogether.”

“I think that his career has been what the novel-reader would call romantic; but what I, who am not one of them, should describe as unfortunate.”