It was his intention to have resettled the estates. At that time, as I need not remind your lordship, my own revered parent stood in the same relation to the Fourth Viscount as I have stood in to the Fifth, and — if I may be permitted to express the wish — as I hope to stand in to your lordship. When, you my lord, attained your majority, it was my earnest desire to have induced his late lordship to repair an omission rendered inevitable by the inscrutable workings of Providence. His lordship, however, did not consider the moment opportune for the prosecution of a design which, I assure you, he had very much at heart Your presence, my lord, must have been essential: I can have no need to recall to your mind the circumstances which would have made it hard indeed for you to have applied for furlough just then. The Combat of the Coa! It seems but yesterday that we were eagerly perusing the account of that engagement, with the words of commendation bestowed by Lord Wellington on the officers and the men of your lordship’s Regiment!”

“The estates, I collect, were even then encumbered?” interpolated his lordship.

Mr Wimmering bowed his head in sorrowful assent, but raised it again to offer a palliative. “But her ladyship’s Jointure was secured to her.”

“And my sisters’ portions?”

Wimmering sighed. After a pause, Adam said: “The case seems to be desperate. What must I do?”

“Serious, my lord, but not desperate, we must trust.” He raised his hand, as Adam made a gesture towards the mass of papers on his desk. “Let me beg of you not to refine too much upon demands which were, under the circumstances, inevitable! None are immediately pressing. A certain degree of alarm in the creditors was to be expected, and to allay that must be — indeed, has been — my first concern. I do not by any means despair of composing all these matters.”

“I have no great head for figures,” Adam replied, “but I think the debts total a larger amount than my disposable assets.” He picked up a paper, and studied it. “You have set no value on the racing-stables, I observe. Those, I think, should be sold at once, and also the town house.”