"Are you free from the De Courcys now?"
"I owe Gazebee, the man who married the other woman, over a thousand pounds. But I pay that off at two hundred a year, and he has a policy on my life."
"What do you owe that for?"
"Don't ask me. Not that I mind telling you;—furniture, and the lease of a house, and his bill for the marriage settlement,—d–––– him."
"God bless me. They seem to have been very hard upon you."
"A man doesn't marry an earl's daughter for nothing, Butterwell. And then to think what I lost! It can't be helped now, you know. As a man makes his bed he must lie on it. I am sometimes so mad with myself when I think over it all,—that I should like to blow my brains out."
"You must not talk in that way, Crosbie. I hate to hear a man talk like that."
"I don't mean that I shall. I'm too much of a coward, I fancy." A man who desires to soften another man's heart, should always abuse himself. In softening a woman's heart, he should abuse her. "But life has been so bitter with me for the last three years! I haven't had an hour of comfort;—not an hour. I don't know why I should trouble you with all this, Butterwell. Oh,—about the money; yes; that's just how I stand. I owed Gazebee something over a thousand pounds, which is arranged as I have told you. Then there were debts, due by my wife,—at least some of them were, I suppose,—and that horrid, ghastly funeral,—and debts, I don't doubt, due by the cursed old countess. At any rate, to get myself clear I raised something over four hundred pounds, and now I owe five which must be paid, part to-morrow, and the remainder this day month."
"And you've no security?"
"Not a rag, not a shred, not a line, not an acre. There's my salary, and after paying Gazebee what comes due to him, I can manage to let you have the money within twelve months,—that is, if you can lend it me. I can just do that and live; and if you will assist me with the money, I will do so. That's what I've brought myself to by my own folly."