Determined to adopt, and strictly to adhere to this line of conduct, and leave the rest to Providence, I washed the traces of tears from my face and returned to the private office.
Here I found Mr. Moncton engaged with papers of consequence.
He held out his hand as I took my seat at the desk. "Are we friends, Geoffrey?"
"That depends upon circumstances" said I.
"How hard it is for you to give a gracious answer," he replied. "It is your own fault that we ever were otherwise."
"I will try and think you my friend for the time to come."
He seemed more amused than surprised at this concession, and for some time we both wrote on in silence.
A tap at the door, and one of the clerks handed in a letter.
Mr. Moncton examined the post-mark and eagerly opened it up. While reading, his countenance underwent one of those remarkable changes I had on several occasions witnessed of late, and which seemed so foreign to his nature.
Suddenly crushing the letter tightly in his hand, he flung it from him to the floor, and spurned it with his foot, exclaiming as he did so, with a fiend-like curl of the lip: "So would I serve the writer were he here!" Then turning to me, and speaking in a low confidential tone, he said: