"And so he actually insinuated that you had it, eh, in the end?"
"Yes—and that's the most I care for; if he had believed me honest, I could have borne the rest unmurmuringly; but to be thought a thief!"
"It seems hard enough, don't it?" said Clinton, in a tone of sympathetic kindness, well-calculated to win on the trusting heart beside him, and laying one hand familiarly on Arthur's knee.
"It's a deuced piece of business, that's all about it!" cried Quirk, growing excited with the wine he had swallowed; "it's an insult I wouldn't take from any man—old or young, or little or big; I'll be dem'd if I would."
An insult! that was a light in which he had not exactly placed it before, and Arthur's blood rose at the thought. Clinton remarked it, with a twinkle of gratification in his keen eye, which he strove to conceal from Arthur's observation.
"It's enough to drive one desperate! I scarcely know what I should do under such circumstances," said he, suddenly, with his eyes fixed keenly upon Arthur's flushed face.
"There's no way for me to do but to put up with it," returned Arthur, doggedly; "I've got to stay there, and make it up; and I may as well do it quietly as to make a disturbance about it, because it's got to be done."
"It's enough to tempt one to try the strength of the old
adage——," continued Clinton, thoughtfully, and pausing in the midst of his sentence.
"What's that?" asked Arthur, without looking up.