In truth, he had been more lucky than he deserved, and he was to be more so yet. Apart from his past follies, the one item of remembrance that made him wince was the thought that his wife should have sacrificed a great portion of her little fortune to patch up his. Even this bitterness was to be taken from him.
Just at this time his brother, Sir Gunton Cleeve, was despatched to England on some mission by the embassy to which he was attached; and he snatched an opportunity to run down to Homedale for four-and-twenty hours. To him Philip made a clean breast of the past, confessing everything: the card-playing, the billiard-playing, the personal extravagance in the shape of petty ornaments and the like; and the voracious silver mine that had quite finished him.
"Why, what a silly young fellow you must have been!" exclaimed the baronet.
"I know it, Gunton, to my cost. I shall know it all my days."
Sir Gunton had sown a few wild oats during his youth, though he had long ago steadied down, and he was not inclined to be too severe.
"What I don't like, Philip, is this, that your wife should have had to pay the premium to Tiplady. It looks mean--for us. What does the mother say?--and the Vicar?"
"The Vicar has said nothing to me: I don't think he intends to blow me up; he has been very good, I must confess. All he said to Maria was, that the money was her own and he could not interfere. As to the mother, Gunton, she knows nothing of my wicked folly; she thinks the twelve hundred pounds was all swallowed up by the mine. Maria went to Tiplady, and paid over the money without saying a word to anybody."
"Well, look here, Philip. I can't stand this: a Cleeve was never mean yet--at least in our day. I am not rich, as you know, but I can manage this much. I will pay the premium to Tiplady; that is, I will refund the money to Maria: and you had better let it be settled upon her. But I do it in the belief that you will never play at folly again: understand that, young fellow."
"Oh, Gunton, you may trust me! How generous you are!"
When Philip had done thanking him, they began to talk of Captain Lennox and the suspicions attaching to him.
"Nobody knows. He can't be found--by the police, or by anybody else. By the way, you knew him three or four years ago. Gunton."