'Then tell your brother,' said Alaric, now losing all control over his temper—'tell your brother, if indeed he have any part in this villany—tell your brother that if it were to save me from the gallows, he should not have a shilling. I have done very badly in this matter; I have acted shamefully, and I am ashamed, but——'
'Oh, I want to hear none of your rhapsodies,' said Undy. 'If you will not now do what I ask you, I may as well go, and you may take the consequences;' and he lifted his hat as though preparing to take his leave.
'But you shall hear me,' said Alaric, rising quickly from his seat, and standing between Undy and the door. Undy very coolly walked to the bell and rang it. 'I have much to answer for,' continued Alaric, 'but I would not have your sin on my soul, I would not be as black as you are, though, by being so, I could save myself with certainty from all earthly punishment.'
As he finished, the messenger opened the door. 'Show Mr. Scott out,' said Alaric.
'By, by,' said Undy. 'You will probably hear from Mrs. Val and her daughter to-morrow,' and so saying he walked jauntily along the passage, and went jauntily to his dinner at his club. It was part of his philosophy that nothing should disturb the even tenor of his way, or interfere with his animal comforts. He was at the present moment over head and ears in debt; he was playing a game which, in all human probability, would end in his ruin; the ground was sinking beneath his feet on every side; and yet he thoroughly enjoyed his dinner. Alaric could not make such use of his philosophy. Undy Scott might be the worse man of the two, but he was the better philosopher.
Not on the next day, or on the next, did Alaric hear from Mrs. Val, but on the following Monday he got a note from her begging him to call in Ebury Street. She underscored every line of it once or twice, and added, in a postscript, that he would, she was sure, at once acknowledge the NECESSITY of her request, as she wished to communicate with him on the subject of her DAUGHTER'S FORTUNE.
Alaric immediately sent an answer to her by a messenger. 'My dear Mrs. Scott,' said he, 'I am very sorry that an engagement prevents my going to you this evening; but, as I judge by your letter, and by what I have heard from Gertrude, that you are anxious about this trust arrangement, I will call at ten to-morrow morning on my way to the office.'
Having written and dispatched this, he sat for an hour leaning with his elbows on the table and his hands clasped, looking with apparent earnestness at the rows of books which stood inverted before him, trying to make up his mind as to what step he should now take.
Not that he sat an hour undisturbed. Every five minutes some one would come knocking at the door; the name of some aspirant to the Civil Service would be brought to him, or the card of some influential gentleman desirous of having a little job perpetrated in favour of his own peculiarly interesting, but perhaps not very highly-educated, young candidate. But on this morning Alaric would see no one; to every such intruder he sent a reply that he was too deeply engaged at the present moment to see any one. After one he would be at liberty, &c., &c.
And so he sat and looked at the books; but he could in nowise make up his mind. He could in nowise bring himself even to try to make up his mind—that is, to make any true effort towards doing so. His thoughts would run off from him, not into the happy outer world, but into a multitude of noisy, unpleasant paths, all intimately connected with his present misery, but none of which led him at all towards the conclusions at which he would fain arrive. He kept on reflecting what Sir Gregory would think when he heard of it; what all those clerks would say at the Weights and Measures, among whom he had held his head so high; what shouts there would be among the navvies and other low pariahs of the service; how Harry Norman would exult—(but he did not yet know Harry Norman);—how the Woodwards would weep; how Gertrude—and then as he thought of that he bowed his head, for he could no longer endure the open light of day. At one o'clock he was no nearer to any decision than he had been when he reached his office.