“And now, my dear sir,” continued he, as we shut up the last of them, “will you dine with me to-day? Let me see; I fear I can’t say before seven, for I have a great deal of work to get through. Some bankruptcy business, about which I have taken some trouble,” he continued, rubbing his hands, “and which we shall manage pretty well in the end, I fancy. By the way, it concerns some friends of yours, too: is not Mr Ormiston of your college? Ay, I thought he was; he is two thousand pounds richer than he fancied himself yesterday.”
“Really?” said I, somewhat interested; “how, may I ask?”
“Why, you see, when Russell’s bank broke—bad business that—we all thought the first dividend—tenpence-halfpenny in the pound, I believe it was—would be the final one: however, there are some foreign securities which, when they first came into the hands of the assignees, were considered of no value at all, but have gone up wonderfully in the market just of late; so that we have delayed finally closing accounts till we could sell them to such advantage as will leave some tolerable pickings for the creditors after all.”
“Had Ormiston money in Mr Russell’s bank, then, at the time?”
“Oh, yes: something like eight thousand pounds: not all his own, though: five thousand he had in trust for some nieces of his, which he had unluckily just sold out of the funds, and placed with Russell, while he was engaged in making arrangements for a more profitable investment; the rest was his own.”
“He lost it all, then?”
“All but somewhere about three hundred pounds, as it appeared at the time. What an excellent fellow he is! You know him well, I dare say. They tell me that he pays the interest regularly to his nieces for their money out of his own income still.”
I made no answer to Mr Rushton at the moment, for a communication so wholly unexpected had awakened a new set of ideas, which I was busily following out in my mind. I seemed to hold in my hands the clue to a good deal of misunderstanding and unhappiness. My determination was soon taken to go to Southampton, see Russell at once, and tell him what I had just heard, and of which I had no doubt he had hitherto been as ignorant as myself. I was rather induced to take this course, as I felt persuaded that Miss Russell’s health was suffering rather from mental than bodily causes; and, in such a case, a great deal of mischief is done in a short time. I would leave town at once.
My purse was in the usual state of an undergraduate’s at the close of a visit to London; so, following up the train of my own reflections, I turned suddenly upon Mr Rushton, who was again absorbed in his papers, and had possibly forgotten my presence altogether, and attacked him with—
“My dear sir, can you lend me ten pounds?”