"Rely upon it, my Lord, it shall be attended to this very day," replied Gammon, scarcely able—troubled though he was—to suppress a smile at the increasing symptoms of purse-pride in the earl, whose long-empty coffers were being so rapidly and unexpectedly replenished by the various enterprises into which, under Gammon's auspices, his Lordship had entered with equal energy and sagacity. While the earl was speaking, the carriage drew up at the door of the company's office, and Gammon alighted. The earl, however, finding that all the gentlemen whom he had left there, had quitted, drove off westward, at a smart pace, and reached the House in time for the matters which he had mentioned to Mr. Gammon. That gentleman soon dropped the languid demeanor he had worn in Lord Dreddlington's presence, and addressed himself with energy and decision to a great number of important and difficult matters demanding his attention—principally connected with several of the public companies in which he was interested—and one of which, in particular, required the greatest possible care and tact, in order to prevent its bursting—prematurely. He had also to get through a considerable arrear of professional affairs, and to write several letters on the private business of Lord Dreddlington, and of Mr. Titmouse—respectively. Nay, he had one or two still more urgent calls upon his attention. First came the action against himself for £4,000 penalties, for bribery, arising out of the Yatton election, and as to which he had received, that afternoon, a very gloomy "opinion" from Mr. Lynx, who was "advising" him on his defence. Much in the same plight, also, were Messrs. Bloodsuck, Mudflint, and Woodlouse, for whom Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap were defending similar actions; and who were worried out of their lives by daily letters from their terror-stricken clients, as to the state, progress, and prospects of the several causes in which they were so deeply interested. All these actions were being pressed forward by the plaintiffs with a view to trial at the ensuing York assizes; had been made, by the plaintiffs, special juries; and, infinitely to Gammon's vexation and alarm, he had found, on hurrying to retain Mr. Subtle, that he, Mr. Sterling, and Mr. Crystal, had been already retained for the plaintiffs! Lastly, he was dreadfully teased by an action of seduction, which had, a few days before, been brought against Mr. Titmouse; and which Gammon, finding it to be a very bad case, was making great efforts to compromise. To each and every of these matters, he gave the attention that was due—and, about seven o'clock, having finished his labors for the day, repaired, a good deal exhausted, to his chambers at Thavies' Inn. After a slight repast, he proceeded to draw up confidential "instructions" for Mr. Frankpledge, to frame the deeds necessary to carry into effect his contemplated arrangement with Titmouse. That did not take him long; and having sealed up his packet, and addressed it, he threw himself down on the sofa, and gave himself up to anxious meditation, for he was aware that he was now, as it were, touching the very crisis of his fortunes. Again, again, and again he recurred to the incident of the day—the destruction of his documents by Titmouse; and cursed his own inconceivable stupidity, even aloud. Yet he could not avoid indulging at the same time in secret pride and exultation at the presence of mind which he had displayed—the successful skill with which he had encountered so sudden, singular, and serious an emergency. But what would be the effect of the destruction of those documents, upon certain secret arrangements of his connected with Titmouse's recovery of the Yatton property? This was a question which occasioned Gammon great perplexity and apprehension. Then, as to Gammon's rent-charge of £2,000 per annum on the Yatton estates—he bethought himself, with no little uneasiness, of some expressions concerning Titmouse's property, let fall by the earl that day: and if his Lordship should persevere in his determination to become minutely acquainted with the state of Titmouse's property, how could the new and heavy encumbrance about to be laid upon it, possibly escape discovery? and if it did, how was it to be accounted for, or supported? Confound it! It seemed as if fate were bent upon urging on a catastrophe!

"Shall I," thought Gammon, "wait till I am challenged on the subject, and then fire my shot, and bring his Lordship down from the tight-rope? Then, however, I cannot but appear to have known the thing from the very beginning; and who knows what liabilities, civil or criminal—of fraud or conspiracy—may be attached to what I have done! Shall I wait for a convenient, though early opportunity, and rush, with dismay and confusion, into the earl's presence, as with a discovery only just made? By Heaven! but the thing wears already a very ugly appearance. If it come out, what an uproar will be in the world! The lightning will fall on my head first, unless I take care. The discovery will doubtless kill Lord Dreddlington; and as for his daughter, it may overturn the little reason she has!"

Passing from this subject, Gammon surveyed his other relations with the earl, which were becoming daily more involved and critical. He had seduced his Lordship into various mercantile speculations, such as had already placed him in a very questionable point of view, as taking deliberate, systematic advantage of the raging mania for bubble companies. In fact, Gammon had, by his skilful but not very scrupulous manœuvring, already put into Lord Dreddlington's pocket some forty thousand pounds, and at the same time involved his Lordship in liabilities which he never dreamed of, and even Gammon himself had not contemplated. Then he warmed with his apparent proximity to Parliament, (to that part of Titmouse's bargain Gammon resolved to hold him to the very letter,) which he was sure of entering on the very next election. By that time he would have realized a sum, through his connection with the various companies, which, even independently of the income to be derived thereafter from the Yatton property, would render him so far independent as to warrant him in dissolving partnership with Messrs. Quirk and Snap, and quitting at least the practice of the profession.

Mr. Gammon was a man of very powerful mind, possessing energies of the highest order, and for the development and display of which he felt, and fretted when he felt, his present position in society afforded him no scope whatever, till at least he had entered upon that series of bold but well-conceived plans and purposes with which he has been represented as occupied, since the time when he first became the secret master of the fortunes of Titmouse. His ambition was boundless, and he felt within himself a capacity for the management of political affairs of no ordinary magnitude, could he but force himself into the regions where his energies and qualifications could be discovered and appreciated. Indeed, I will undertake to say, that, had Gammon only been a GOOD man, he would, in all probability, have become a great one. But, to proceed with the matters which were then occupying his busy brain. There was yet one upon which all his thoughts settled with a sort of agitating interest—his connection with the Aubreys; and whenever that name occurred to his thoughts, one beauteous image rose before him like that of an angel—I mean Miss Aubrey. She was the first object that had ever excited in him any, the faintest, semblance of the passion of love—that love, I mean, which is in a manner purified and sublimated from all grossness or sensuality by a due appreciation of intellectual and moral excellence. When he dwelt upon the character of Miss Aubrey, and for a moment realized the possibility of a union with her, he felt, as it were, elevated above himself. Then her person was very beautiful; and there was a certain bewitching something about her manners, which Gammon could only feel, not describe; in short, his passion for her had risen to a most extraordinary pitch of intensity, and became a sort of infatuation. In spite of all that had happened at Yatton, he had contrived to continue, and was at that moment, on terms of considerable intimacy with the Aubreys; and had, moreover, been all the while so watchful over himself as to have given none of them any reason to suspect the state of his feelings towards Miss Aubrey; and, on the other hand, nothing had ever transpired to give him the slightest inkling of the state of matters between Miss Aubrey and Delamere—with the exception of one solitary circumstance which had at the moment excited his suspicions—Mr. Delamere's contesting the borough of Yatton. Though he had watched for it, however, nothing had afterwards occurred calculated to confirm his apprehensions. He had taken infinite pains to keep a good name in Vivian Street, with great art representing, from time to time, his disgust for the conduct and character of Titmouse, and the reluctance with which he discharged his professional duty towards that gentleman. He made a point of alluding to the "gross and malignant insult" which had been offered at the hustings to the venerable Vicar of Yatton, and which, he said, was a sudden suggestion of Mr. Titmouse's, and carried into effect by "that vile Unitarian parson, Mudflint," in defiance of Mr. Gammon's wishes to the contrary. He represented himself as still haunted by the mild, reproachful look with which Dr. Tatham had regarded him, as though he had been the author of the insult. The account which appeared in the True Blue of his indignant interference on the occasion of Mr. Delamere's being struck on the hustings, was calculated, as Mr. Gammon conceived, to corroborate his representations, and aid the impression he was so anxious to produce. For the same reason, Mr. Gammon, whenever he had been at Yatton, had acted with great caution and secrecy, so as to give no cause of offence to Dr. Tatham; to whom he from time to time complained, in confidence, of those very acts of Mr. Titmouse which had been dictated to him by Mr. Gammon. Thus reasoned Mr. Gammon; but it would indeed have been singular had he succeeded as he desired and expected. He lost sight of the proverbial influence of one's wishes over one's belief. In imagining that he had concealed from the Aubreys all the unfavorable features of his conduct, was he not, in some degree, exhibiting the folly of the bird, which, thrusting its head only into the bush, imagines that it has thereby concealed its whole body?

The Aubreys knew amply sufficient to warrant a general dislike and distrust of Mr. Gammon; but there existed grave reasons for avoiding any line of conduct which Gammon might choose to consider offensive. Mr. Aubrey justly regarded him as standing, at present, alone between him and some of his most serious liabilities. If Gammon, to accomplish objects to them undiscoverable, wore a mask—why challenge his enmity by attempting to tear off that mask? Mr. Aubrey governed his movements, therefore, with a prudent caution; and though, after the election, and the infamous decision of the election committee, Gammon was received at Vivian Street—whither he went with no little anxiety and trepidation—it was with a visibly increased coolness and reserve, but still with studious courtesy; and beyond that distinct but delicate line, none of them ever advanced a hair's-breadth, which Gammon observed with frequent and heavy misgivings. But he felt that something must at length be done, or attempted, to carry into effect his fond wishes with reference to Miss Aubrey. Months had elapsed, and their relative position seemed totally unchanged since the first evening that his manœuvre had procured him a brief introduction to Mrs. Aubrey's drawing-room. In fact, he considered that the time had arrived for making known, in some way or another, the state of his feelings to Miss Aubrey; and after long deliberation, he resolved to do so without loss of time, and, moreover, personally. He had a fearful suspicion that he should be—at all events at first—unsuccessful; and now that, having taken his determination, he passed in rapid review all their intercourse, he perceived less and less ground for being sanguine; for he felt that Miss Aubrey's manner towards him had been throughout more cold and guarded than that of either Mr. or Mrs. Aubrey. Like a prudent general contemplating the contingencies of an important expedition, and calculating his means of encountering them, Gammon considered—persuasion failing—what means of compulsion had he? He came, at length, finally to the conclusion, that his resources were most available at that moment; and, moreover, that his circumstances required an immediate move.

The very next day, about ten o'clock, he sallied forth from his chambers, and bent his steps towards Vivian Street, intending to keep watch for at least a couple of hours, with a view to ascertaining whether Mrs. Aubrey's going out unaccompanied by Miss Aubrey would afford him an opportunity of seeing Miss Aubrey, alone and undisturbed; reasonably reckoning on the absence of Mr. Aubrey at the Temple, whither he knew he always went about half-past nine o'clock. That day, however, Mr. Gammon watched in vain; during the time that he stayed, only the servants and the children quitted the door. The next day he walked deliberately close past the house; was that brilliant and tasteful performance of the piano, hers? Again, however, he was unsuccessful. On the third day, from a safe distance, he beheld both Mrs. and Miss Aubrey, accompanied by a female servant and the children, quit the house, and walk in the direction of the Park, whither—but at a great distance—he followed their movements with a beating heart. On a subsequent occasion, he saw Miss Aubrey leave the house, accompanied only by little Charles, and he instantly turned his steps despondingly eastward. How little did either of those fair beings dream of the strict watch thus kept upon their every movement! Two days afterwards, however, Gammon's perseverance was rewarded; for shortly after eleven o'clock, he beheld Mrs. Aubrey, accompanied by the two children, quit the house, and turn towards the Park. Gammon's heart began to beat hard. Though he never cared much for dress, his appearance on the present occasion afforded indications of some little attention to it; and he appeared simply a well-dressed gentleman, in a dark-blue buttoned surtout, with velvet collar, and plain black stock, as, after a moment's somewhat flurried pause, he knocked and rang at Mr. Aubrey's door.

"Is Mr. Aubrey within?" he inquired of the very pretty and respectable-looking maid-servant, who presently answered his summons.

"No, sir; he is never here after"——

"Perhaps Mrs. Aubrey"——

"No, sir; there is only Miss Aubrey at home; my mistress and the children are gone out into the Park, and Miss Aubrey is writing letters, or she would have gone with my mistress."