"Oh, you shall be present," replied Morley, gaily, "but recollect, Lieberg, you have been wrong once in regard to your calculation of my proceedings, and you may be mistaken, even now."
Lieberg looked at him with a quiet smile, but made no reply, and the conversation dropped there. As usually happens in London, two or three gay fêtes took place, as if to close the season brilliantly, and, whenever it was possible, Lieberg induced his young friend to go to these parties, and introduced him to a number of the persons present. Although, by this time, all Morley's plans and purposes, in regard to the study of society, had been burnt up, like old acts of parliament, in the fire of passion, he was not sorry to see such scenes, and to know such people. But if Lieberg thought that Morley was likely to plunge into the vortex of dissipated life, to have his attention distracted, and his eyes blinded, by the gay scenes and bright objects around him, so as to forget his purposes in regard to Helen Barham, and to leave her to her fate, even for a short period, Lieberg was mistaken.
Had Morley not known Juliet Carr, he might have drunk of the cup of pleasure to intoxication; for there were many beautiful, and sparkling, and brilliant, who were right willing to lead him into paths more flowery than safe, and to assail him on all sides, with arms very difficult for a young man to resist. But Morley was defended now with that highest and noblest of armours, love for a pure and beautiful being. His life, in short, was in Juliet Carr, and all the rest around him was but a pageant or a dream.
CHAPTER XXIII.
"Take care you're not done, Bill--that's all I say!" was the exclamation of the good-looking, powerful fellow, who has once already been placed before the reader's eyes, under the name of Harry Martin, and who now sat with Helen's brother in the house she had inhabited. "If he gets you on board ship, you mayn't get out again, I take it; but you know your own business best. I don't like the job, I can tell you. I think you're all wrong, my lad, and you'll find it out some day.--Come, pass us another glass, and I'll be jogging.--If I were you, I would stick to my sister; she's a very good girl, I hear; and hang me, Bill, it's very well talking, but a good girl's a good girl, you know, and a bad one's a bad one--there's no mistake. You that are born a gentleman, too, I should have thought you'd something more of it in you. Why didn't ye fly at the fellow's throat when he shewed you the paper, and tear it all to pieces in a minute?"
"I couldn't," said William Barham, who had been gazing down upon the floor, with a look half sullen, half ashamed; "there was a table between us, and I couldn't get at it."
"If you could get hold of that," said Harry Martin, "the job would be at an end, you know; you could do what you pleased. Can't you make him shew it you again?"
The boy shook his head. "It wont do, Harry," he said; "he keeps it in a little pocket-book, with some other things; and I would have tried to get it out of his pocket quietly, as Simes showed me how one day, but you see it's an inside pocket, and I can't get at it."
"Why, for that matter, one could cut his pocket off," said Harry Martin; "and I shouldn't care if I had a hand in it; but we must have two or three, and unless there was a good deal of tin to be had besides, the men would not like to risk a trip to Botany, just to get that note of yours. However, I'll think over it, and talk with some other fellows about it, and perhaps we shall bring the thing right after all. I'll take one more glass, and then I'll go."
William Barham thought for a moment or two, and then said, "I'll tell you what, Harry, when we find out where Helen is, he's sure to go down into the country after her. Don't you think that one could do something, as he goes? He has always lots of money about him, and that gold snuff box which there was a piece of work about once with Bill Jones, you know; and if he goes into the country for any time, his dressing-case is worth a cool couple of hundred, just to make soup of, as you call it. It's all gold and silver together."