“I hope,” said the visitor, as if the question had just occurred to him, “that you have made free use of the money it was my privilege to offer you recently.”
Mr. Ford replied gratefully, that he had expended about one half of it. He hoped to be able to repay it some day.
“Of course,” argued the lawyer to himself, “he could not pay it now. That is what I wanted to know.”
“I ought perhaps to mention,” he said, carelessly, “that having a large claim unexpectedly presented for payment yesterday, I raised money upon your note, expressly stipulating that you should not be called upon for it, as I should be able to redeem it in a day or two.”
“You are very kind,” said Mr. Ford. “Perhaps I had better return you the money yet remaining in my hands.”
“By no means, my dear sir,” exclaimed Mr. Sharp, almost indignantly; “shall I recall the humble offering which I have laid upon the altar of science? Nay, I am resolved that my name shall be humbly connected with yours, when the world has learned to recognize your genius, and numbers you among its benefactors.”
How was it possible to suspect a friendship so disinterested?
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE BLOW FALLS.
The next morning found Mr. Sharp closeted with a brother practitioner equally unprincipled with himself. There was this difference between them, however, that while Mr. Sharp concealed his real character beneath a specious show of affability and suavity, his companion, whom, by way of distinction, we will call Blunt, was rough in his manners, and had not art enough to compass the consummate duplicity of the other. Indeed, so accustomed was Mr. Sharp to its use, that he did not lay it aside even where he knew it to be useless.
“My dear friend Blunt,” he exclaimed, with charming cordiality, “I am delighted to see you looking so well.”