worse than ill used. I do not want to use strong language, but it will be more, than ill usage. I can hardly believe that he really means to treat me in that way."
"It is very hard that he should want his own money!"
"It is not his money that he wants. It is my property."
"And has he not paid for it? Have you not had the price of your property? Now, Sowerby, it is of no use for you to be angry; you have known for the last three years what was coming on you as well as I did. Why should the duke lend you money without an object? Of course he has his own views. But I do say this, he has not hurried you; and, had you been able to do any thing to save the place, you might have done it. You have had time enough to look about you."
Sowerby still stood in the place in which he had first fixed himself, and now for a while he remained silent. His face was very stern, and there was in his countenance none of those winning looks which often told so powerfully with his young friends—which had caught Lord Lufton and had charmed Mark Robarts. The world was going against him, and things around him were coming to an end. He was beginning to perceive that he had in truth eaten his cake, and that there was now little left for him to do, unless he chose to blow out his brains. He had said to Lord Lufton that a man's back should be broad enough for any burden with which he himself might load it. Could he now boast that his back was broad enough and strong enough for this burden? But he had even then, at that bitter moment, a strong remembrance that it behooved him still to be a man. His final ruin was coming on him, and he would soon be swept away out of the knowledge and memory of those with whom he had lived. But, nevertheless, he would bear himself well to the last. It was true that he had made his own bed, and he understood the justice which required him to lie upon it.
During all this time Fothergill occupied himself with the papers. He continued to turn over one sheet after another as though he were deeply engaged in money considerations and calculations. But, in truth, during all that time he did not read a word. There was nothing there for him to read. The reading and the writing, and the arithmetic in such matters, are done by underlings, not by such big men as Mr. Fothergill. His business was to tell Sowerby that
