"I don't know. I don't think it would be right. The necklet is in mother's dressing-case. I never have kept it myself. Of course, it is mine, as grannie left it to me, or it would have been sold. Still I don't think it would be right. O Raymond, I wish I could ask some one about it."
"If you do that you will ruin me. If I can get the money quietly, I will promise not to borrow again."
"Did you use it for--for that ulster and pin, and--" Salome was alarmed at her own boldness; and Raymond answered,--
"And you are in debt for those things also?"
"Yes; but that does not matter--tradesmen will wait. It's this fellow Percival."
"Oh, is it Percival, the brother of Reg's friend? Digby knows him; he is very good and nice. I thought you despised him."
"I said he wore a coat out of elbows in the office; but he is a gentleman for all that, I find."
"I should think so," said Salome indignantly; "as if a coat made any difference. But I can't imagine how it was he had money to lend you."
"He is a miser, you see," said Raymond. "He is saving up, and grinding and pinching, that the brother at the college may get to Oxford. They say he will get a scholarship; but that would not keep him, and so this fellow is saving up. I'll tell you how it was I borrowed the money. I told him a cram, and said it was to keep my mother and all of you."
"O Raymond! how could you be so mean and deceitful?"
Raymond took his sister's plain speaking very quietly, because he looked upon her as his only hope. "Percival found out that I had spent the money in billiards, and--well you know, in 'The Queen's,' with Barington while he was here; and--"
"I think it is dreadful," Salome interrupted. "I could not have believed it of you."
"Well, look here, Sal, will you save me from a frightful row with Uncle Loftus by seeing Percival, and trying to make him wait for his money? I expect he would believe you; and I really don't want to--to vex my poor mother. It was bad enough last night about old Warde; and I promised to do better at the office, and that I would go to Edinburgh Crescent to-night just to please her, for I detest it. If there is a row with Percival, it will make her ill."
"You should have thought of that before," was on Salome's lips, but she refrained from saying so.