"Where did he get it?" eagerly inquired Grace.
"I did not ask him. It was only since I left him that I noticed the number. I'll get it out of him by-and-by."
"At once, at once, sir," urged Mary. "Oh, papa, do go to him. I feel _sure_ Charles is not guilty."
"No impatience, Mary. Where the deuce am I to pick up Waterware at this time of day? I might as well look for a needle in a bottle of hay. Tonight I shall know where to find him."
Chance, however, favoured the earl. In strolling up St. James's Street in the afternoon, he met Lord Waterware.
"I say, Waterware," he began, linking his arm in that of the younger peer, "where did you get that fifty-pound note you gave me this morning?"
"Where did I get it? Let's see. Oh, from Nile. He was owing me a hundred pounds, and paid me yesterday. That fifty, two twenties, and a ten. Why? It's not forged, I suppose," cried the young nobleman, with a yawn.
"Not exactly. Wish I had a handful of them. Good-day. I'm going on to Nile's."
Colonel Nile, though addicted to playing a little at cards for what he called amusement, and sometimes did it for tolerably high stakes, was a very different man from those other men mentioned in this history--Colonel Haughton and Mr. Piggott, who had led Robert Dalrymple to his ruin. They were professed gamblers, and had disappeared from good society long ago. Colonel Nile was a popular member of it, liked and respected.
Lord Acorn found him at home, walking about in a flowery dressing-gown. He was a middle-aged man and a bachelor, and well off.
"The fifty-pound note I paid over to Waterware," cautiously repeated Colonel Nile, somewhat surprised at the question, and wondering whether random young Waterware had got into any scrape. "Why do you want to know where I got it?"
"Because it is one of the notes that Charley Cleveland is in trouble for: the first of them that has been traced. You must give me the information, Nile, or I shall apply for it publicly."
"Oh, I have no objection in the world," cried the colonel, determined to afford all that was in his power, and so wash his hands of any unpleasantness that might turn up. "I received it at Lady Sanely's loo table, from---- Egad! from your own daughter, Lady Adela."