e; and he had not a most exalted
opinion of Mr. Nowell's virtue--he knew too many secrets connected with
his early career.

"Remember, if ever by any strange chance you should come into this
property, you have me to thank for getting your name into the will, and
for giving your daughter only a life interest. She would have had every
penny left to her without reserve, if I hadn't fought for your interests
as hard as ever I fought for anything in the whole course of my
professional career."

"You're a good fellow, Medler; and if ever fortune should favour me,
which hardly seems on the cards, I sha'n't forget what I promised you the
other day. I daresay you did the best you could for me, though it doesn't
amount to much when it's done."

Long after Percival Nowell had left him, Mr. Medler sat idle at his desk
meditating upon his interview with that gentleman.

"I can't half understand his coolness," he said to himself; "I expected
him to be as savage as a bear when he found that the old man had left him
nothing. I thought I should hear nothing but execrations and blasphemies;
for I think I know my gentleman pretty well of old, and that he's not a
person to take a disappointment of this kind very sweetly. There must be
something under that quiet manner of his. Perhaps he knows more about his
daughter than he cares to let out; knows that she is sickly, and that he
stands a good chance of surviving her."

There was indeed a lurking desperation under Percival Nowell's airy
manner, of which the people amongst whom he lived had no suspicion.
Unless some sudden turn in the wheel of fortune should change the aspect
of affairs for him very soon, ruin, most complete and utter, was
inevitable. A man cannot go on very long without money; and in order to
pay his hotel-bill Mr. Nowell had been obliged to raise the funds from an
accommodating gentleman with whom he had done business in years gone by,
and who was very familiar with his own and his father's autograph. The
bill upon which this gentleman advanced the money in question bore the
name of Jacob Nowell, and was drawn at three months. Percival had
persuaded himself that before the three months were out his father would
be in his grave, and his executors would scarcely be in a position to
dispute the genuineness of the signature. In the meantime the money thus
obtained enabled him to float on. He paid his hotel-bill, and removed to
lodgings in one of the narrow streets to the