this;
and I said as much,--but as he positively refused to make me an agent, and
he insisted that it was so much to your lordship's interests--why, I
thought, my lord, that perhaps--just now----"

"Show him in."

Carnaby bowed low and submissively, and after busying himself in placing
the chairs aside, and adjusting the table more conveniently for the elbow
of his guest, he left the room.

"Where is the man I bid you keep in the shop?" demanded the retailer, in a
coarse, authoritative voice, when without; addressing a meek and
humble-looking lad, who did the duty of clerk. "I warrant me, he is left
in the kitchen, and you have been idling about on the walk! A more
heedless and inattentive lad than yourself is not to be found in America,
and the sun never rises but I repent having signed your indentures. You
shall pay for this, you----"

The appearance of the person he sought, cut short the denunciations of the
obsequious grocer and the domestic tyrant. He opened the door, and, having
again closed it, left his two visiters together.

Though the degenerate descendant of the great Clarendon had not hesitated
to lend his office to cloak the irregular and unlawful trade that was then
so prevalent in the American seas, he had paid the sickly but customary
deference to virtue, of refusing on all occasions, to treat personally
with its agents. Sheltered behind his official and personal rank, he had
soothed his feelings, by tacitly believing that cupidity is less venal
when its avenues are hidden, and that in protecting his station from an
immediate contact with its ministers, he had discharged an important, and,
for one in his situation, an imperative, duty. Unequal to the exercise of
virtue itself, he thought he had done enough in preserving some of its
seemliness. Though far from paying even this slight homage to decency, in
his more ordinary habits, his pride of rank had, on the subject of so
coarse a failing, induced him to maintain an appearance which his pride of
character would not have suggested. Carnaby was much the most degraded and
the lowest of those with whom he ever condescended to communicate
directly; and even with him there might have been some scruple, had not
his necessities caused him to stoop so far as to accept pecuniary
assistance from one he both despised and detested.

When the door opened, therefore, the lord Cornbury rose, and, determined
to bring the interview to a speedy issue, he turned to f