“He’s no more mad than I am, and I don’t care who says the contrary.”
“Perhaps you speculate on being called as a witness to his sanity?” said Ladarelle, with a sneer.
“I do not, Sir; but if I was, I’d be a mighty troublesome one to the other side.”
“What the deuce led us into this foolish discussion! As if it signified one rush to me whether he was to be thought the wisest sage or the greatest fool in Christendom. What I want, and what I am determined on, is that we are not to be dragged into Chancery, and made town talk of, because a cunning minx has turned an old rake’s head. I’d be hunted by a set of hungry rascals of creditors to-morrow if the old man were to marry. There’s not one of them wouldn’t believe that my chance of the estate was all ‘up.’”
“There’s sense in that; there is reason in what you say now,” said O’Rorke.
“And that’s not the worst of it, either,” continued Ladarelle, who, like all weak men, accepted any flattery, even at the expense of the object he sought; “but my governor would soon know how deep I am, and he’d cast me adrift. Not a pleasant prospect, Master O’Rorke, to a fellow who ought to succeed to about twelve thousand a year.”
“Could he do it by law?”
“Some say one thing, some another; but this I know, that if my creditors get a hold of me now, as the fox said, there would be very little running left in me when they’d done with me. But here’s the short and the long of it. We must not let Sir Within marry, that’s the first thing; and the second is, there would be no objection to any plan that will give him such a shock—he’s just ready for a shock—that he wouldn’t recover from. Do you see it now?”
“I see it all, only I don’t see how it’s to be done.”
“I wonder what you are here for, then?” asked the other, angrily. “I took you into my pay thinking I had a fellow with expedients at his fingers’ ends; and, except to see you make objections, and discover obstacles, I’ll be hanged if I know what you’re good for.”