Egerton's brow contracted slightly. "And Mr. Levy was there, eh?"
"Yes—the baron."
"Baron! true. Come to plague me about the Mexican loan, I suppose.
I will keep you no longer."
Randal, much meditating, left the house, and re-entered his hack cab.
The baron was admitted to the statesman's presence.
CHAPTER XIV.
Egerton had thrown himself at full length on the sofa, a position exceedingly rare with him; and about his whole air and manner, as Levy entered, there was something singularly different from that stateliness of port common to the austere legislator. The very tone of his voice was different. It was as if the statesman, the man of business, had vanished; it was rather the man of fashion and the idler who, nodding languidly to his visitor, said, "Levy, what money can I have for a year?"
"The estate will bear very little more. My dear fellow, that last election was the very devil. You cannot go on thus much longer."
"My dear fellow!" Baron Levy hailed Audley Egerton as "my dear fellow"! And Audley Egerton, perhaps, saw nothing strange in the words, though his lip curled.
"I shall not want to go on thus much longer," answered Egerton, as the curl on his lip changed to a gloomy smile. "The estate must, meanwhile, bear L5,000 more."
"A hard pull on it. You had really better sell."