g with passion
and his grey eyes glinting as he tore the epistle to fragments, threw
them down and stamped on them. "Well, be careful that I don't one day
cut your claws and paint your stripes. By heaven, if ever a man felt
like murder, I do now. Five hundred more, and I haven't five thousand
clear in the world. Truly we pay for the follies of our youth! It
makes me mad to think of those fools Cossey and Son forcing that place
into the market just now. There's a fortune in it at the price. In
another year or two I might have recovered myself--that devil of a
woman might be dead--and I have several irons in the fire, some of
which are sure to turn up trumps. Surely there must be a way out of it
somehow. There's a way out of everything except Death if only one
thinks enough, but the thing is to find it," and he stopped in his
walk opposite to the window that looked upon the street, and put his
hand to his head.

As he did so he caught sight of the figure of a tall gentleman
strolling idly towards the office door. For a moment he stared at him
blankly, as a man does when he is trying to catch the vague clue to a
new idea. Then, as the figure passed out of his view, he brought his
fist down heavily upon the sill.

"Edward Cossey, by George!" he said aloud. "There's the way out of it,
if only I can work him, and unless I have made a strange mistake, I
think I know the road."

A couple of minutes afterwards a tall, shapely young man, of about
twenty-four or five years of age, came strolling into the office where
Mr. Quest was sitting, to all appearance hard at work at his
correspondence. He was dark in complexion and decidedly distinguished-
looking in feature, with large dark eyes, dark moustachios, and a
pale, somewhat Spanish-looking skin. Young as the face was, it had, if
observed closely, a somewhat worn and worried air, such as one would
scarcely expect to see upon the countenance of a gentleman born to
such brilliant fortunes, and so well fitted by nature to do them
justice, as was Mr. Edward Cossey. For it is not every young man with
dark eyes and a good figure who is destined to be the future head of
one of the most wealthy private banks in England, and to inherit in
due course a sum of money in hard cash variously estimated at from
half a million to a million sterling. This, however, was the prospect
in life that opened out before Mr. Edward Cossey, who was now supposed
by his old and eminently business-like fat