And now—to condense as much as possible a record that runs darkly on into pain and sorrow—now Levy began to practise his vindictive arts; and the arts gradually prevailed. On pretence of assisting Egerton in the arrangement of his affairs, which he secretly contrived, however, still more to complicate, he came down frequently to Egerton Hall for a few hours, arriving by the mail, and watching the effect which Nora’s almost daily letters produced on the bridegroom, irritated by the practical cares of life. He was thus constantly at hand to instil into the mind of the ambitious man a regret for the imprudence of hasty passion, or to embitter the remorse which Audley felt for his treachery to L’Estrange. Thus ever bringing before the mind of the harassed debtor images at war with love, and with the poetry of life, he disattuned it (so to speak) for the reception of Nora’s letters, all musical as they were with such thoughts as the most delicate fancy inspires to the most earnest love. Egerton was one of those men who never confide their affairs frankly to women. Nora, when she thus wrote, was wholly in the dark as to the extent of his stern prosaic distress. And so—and so—Levy always near—type of the prose of life in its most cynic form—so by degrees all that redundant affluence of affection, with its gushes of grief for his absence, prayers for his return, sweet reproach if a post failed to bring back an answer to the woman’s yearning sighs,—all this grew, to the sensible, positive man of real life, like sickly romantic exaggeration. The bright arrows shot too high into heaven to hit the mark set so near to the earth. Ah, common fate of all superior natures! What treasure, and how wildly wasted! “By-the-by,” said Levy, one morning, as he was about to take leave of Audley and return to town,—“by-the-by, I shall be this evening in the neighbourhood of Mrs. Egerton.”
EGERTON.—“Say Mrs. Bertram!”
LEVY.—“Ay; will she not be in want of some pecuniary supplies?”
EGERTON. “My wife!—Not yet. I must first be wholly ruined before she can want; and if I were so, do you think I should not be by her side?”
LEVY.—“I beg pardon, my dear fellow; your pride of gentleman is so susceptible that it is hard for a lawyer not to wound it unawares. Your wife, then, does not know the exact state of your affairs?”
EGERTON.—“Of course not. Who would confide to a woman things in which she could do nothing, except to tease one the more?”
LEVY.—“True, and a poetess too! I have prevented your finishing your answer to Mrs. Bertram’s last letter. Can I take it—it may save a day’s delay—that is, if you do not object to my calling on her this evening.”
EGERTON (sitting down to his unfinished letter).—“Object! no.”
LEVY (looking at his watch).—“Be quick, or I shall lose the coach.”
EGEPTON (sealing the letter).—“There. And I should be obliged to you if you would call; and without alarming her as to my circumstances, you can just say that you know I am much harassed about important affairs at present, and so soothe the effects of my very short answers—”