What an absurd idea! Lord Hardy
and Augusta Browne! I laughed till I cried when I told Ted about it and
asked him what he thought of it.
"'I might do worse,' he said, and then walked away, and that afternoon
took Mrs. Browne and Augusta over to Villefranche.
"Ted is very much changed from the boy whom I smuggled into the
play-room at Monte Carlo as my Cousin Susan, and I can't get him near
there now. It seems that he lost a great deal of money one night, and
actually left the Casino with the intention to kill himself. But he had
not the courage to do it, though he told me he put the muzzle of the
pistol to his forehead, when a thought of his mother stayed his hand and
the suicide was prevented. She was in heaven, he said, and he wanted to
see her again. If he killed himself he knew he should not, and so he
concluded to live, but made a vow never to play again, and he has kept
it and become almost as big a spoony as Jack Trevellian. By the way, I
saw Trevellian the other day, and when I said something about hoping to
pay him his ten pounds soon, he told me _you_ had paid it.
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