“As an earnest of future service, yes, sir, I will do your bidding, and if great attention and extreme care can accomplish your desire, it shall be done.”
“Persevere, yourself, young sir, in such a disposition, and you will become a thriving man.”
“I hope to please you, sir.”
“You will; of course, you will, you will do me zealous service. But mark me you must follow this man, who will call at my house, as you would follow some light that would lead you from the caverns of poverty to fortune. Track him home, and see him fairly housed. Then mark the place by every token that may enable you again to lay your very hand upon the door, and cry, ‘Here dwells that man!’”
“I will, sir, and I hope you may find him more deserving than you think.”
“I hope I may,” said Learmont.
They now walked along the Birdcage-walk, for they had doubled the canal, and were approaching towards Westminister again. For the space of more than five minutes neither spoke, for both were busy with reflections, although of a widely different character.
Albert Seyton was more and more suspicions of the intentions of Learmont, and he began to think him a man, most probably, mixed up in some dark political intrigues, to carry out which, he required some simple and unsuspecting agent. There was something very galling to the proud spirit of Albert, in the supposition that Learmont had pitched upon him, as thinking him weak enough to believe anything, and never to suspect that the employment he was set upon was far different from what it purported to be, and he longed to say, “But I am not so simple and foolish as you may imagine me, and have my doubts, and grave suspicions concerning your conduct and the truth of words;” but then he could not bring himself to say so much, because all as yet was merely made up of doubt and suspicion, and he considered how ridiculously foolish he would look by allowing his imagination to run riot in creating apprehensions, perhaps after all, to be completely dissipated by the result, and arising only, possibly, from his young and uninstructed fancy and ignorance of the ways of the world.
Albert Seyton, therefore, prudently determined to be watchful and wary; but to take nothing on surmise, and to believe, or affect to believe, as far as the non-expression of doubt went, all that Learmont might choose to say until some positive and glaring fact contradicted him.
While these thoughts were passing through Albert’s mind, Learmont, on the other hand, was congratulating himself upon his meeting with the young man, and extracting from the whole circumstance food for more agreeable hope and reflection than had illumined his gloomy mind for a long previous period.