dare-devil gaiety which he knew so well how to wear and
use, felt all this as keenly as any man could feel it. It had been
absolutely his own fault. The acres had come to him all his own, and
now, before his death, every one of them would have gone bodily into
that greedy maw. The duke had bought up nearly all the debts which
had been secured upon the property, and now could make a clean sweep
of it. Sowerby, when he received that message from Mr. Fothergill,
knew well that this was intended; and he knew well also, that when
once he should cease to be Mr. Sowerby of Chaldicotes, he need never
again hope to be returned as member for West Barsetshire. This
world would for him be all over. And what must such a man feel when
he reflects that this world is for him all over? On the morning
in question he went to his appointment, still bearing a cheerful
countenance. Mr. Fothergill, when in town on such business as this,
always had a room at his service in the house of Messrs. Gumption &
Gazebee, the duke's London law agents, and it was thither that Mr.
Sowerby had been summoned. The house of business of Messrs. Gumption
& Gazebee was in South Audley Street; and it may be said that there
was no spot on the whole earth which Mr. Sowerby so hated as he did
the gloomy, dingy back sitting-room upstairs in that house. He had
been there very often, but had never been there without annoyance. It
was a horrid torture-chamber, kept for such dread purposes as these,
and no doubt had been furnished, and papered, and curtained with the
express object of finally breaking down the spirits of such poor
country gentlemen as chanced to be involved. Everything was of a
brown crimson,--of a crimson that had become brown. Sunlight, real
genial light of the sun, never made its way there, and no amount of
candles could illumine the gloom of that brownness. The windows were
never washed; the ceiling was of a dark brown; the old Turkey carpet
was thick with dust, and brown withal. The ungainly office-table, in
the middle of the room, had been covered with black leather, but that
was now brown. There was a bookcase full of dingy brown law books in
a recess on one side of the fireplace, but no one had touched them
for years, and over the chimney-piece hung some old legal pedigree
table, black with soot. Such was the room which Mr. Fothergill always
used in the business house of Messrs. Gumption & Gazebee, in South
Audley Street, near to Park Lane.

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