Moore listened in silence to his friend's story, and when he had finished said:
"You have not told Bessie, sir?"
"Not yet, Thomas."
"Then do not tell her. Let me settle with Sir Percival. I 'll find some way to beat him yet."
Leaving Mr. Dyke where he had found him, Moore went in search of the publisher.
Chapter Twenty
TOM MOORE MAKES A BAD BARGAIN
Mr. McDermot raised his bald head as Moore approached him in the smoking-room. His keen, hatchet-shaped face was framed on either side by a huge mutton-chop whisker which was like nothing else half so much as a furze bush recently sifted over by a snow-storm. This worthy gentleman regarded Moore with a keenness that seemed to the poet to penetrate and to coldly scrutinize his troubled mind, for Moore was ever a poor hand at dissimulation and bore on his unusually cheery countenance only too plainly the mark of the mental anxiety he was now enduring.
"Weel, Mr. Moore, what can I do for ye, sair?"
"Sir," said Moore, trying to hide his eagerness, "I have been thinking over the proposition you made a week ago at the instigation of Lord Lansdowne."