“Believe me, dear Mr. Luttrell,
“Faithfully yours,
“George Cane, for Cane and Carter.”
Luttrell was very angry at this letter. It was an insufferable liberty that Cane had taken. Cane should have written—should have asked his pleasure—should have inquired whether even the certainty of selling the collection was not overpaid for at the price of this unseemly intrusion. “There is no inn on the island. This man must be my guest, and with the variable weather here, who can tell for how long? He may feel, or affect to feel, interested about the place and its people, and prolong his stay for days!”
There was, however, one passage in the letter which pained him to the quick; it was very brief, but, to him, very significant. It ran thus: “But I am aware—better, perhaps, than you are—that you are in want of money.”
Now, Messrs. Cane and Carter had been for some time making advances—small, it is true—to Luttrell, and as well to intimate to him that he had overdrawn with them, as to imply that they did not desire a continuance of the practice, his correspondent threw in that parenthesis—so full of meaning as it was.
There was a time, as late as his own father’s day, when Messrs. Cane and Company would not have written such a letter. Not a few of the broad acres of the Luttrells had passed into their hands since that, however. They had not their country-houses and conservatories in those days; nor their sons in the “Guards;” nor a daughter married to a Viscount.
How is it that men will often grow more bitter over their fallen fortunes, when they contrast them with the prosperity of others who have never injured them? Cane had actually befriended Luttrell in many ways; in keeping the agency of the small remnant of property that belonged to him, he was really performing a kind office; but Luttrell could not, for all this, forgive him for being prosperous.
He sat down to write two notes, one to Mr. Cane, a very sharp reproof, for a liberty which he ought never to have presumed upon, and which nothing, in their respective conditions, could warrant or excuse. “While,” added he, “I am no less surprised at your remark, that you are even more than myself aware of my need of money. The observation either implies a sensitive sympathy for which I was not prepared, or a covert impertinence which I hesitate to accept as credible.
“I will not receive your friend Mr. Dodge, nor shall I again trouble you with the private and personal interests of