e was a fraud, he was
selfish and unscrupulous in his schemes and relentless in their
execution, but whatever may have been the measure of his iniquities,
he was not doomed to wait for another world to have them meted out to
him again. His life, indeed, was full of miseries, the more keenly
felt because of the high pitch and capacity of his nature, and perhaps
the sharpest of them all was the sickening knowledge that had it not
been for that one fatal error of his boyhood, that one false step down
the steep of Avernus, he might have been a good and even a great man.

Just now, however, his load was a little lightened, and he was able to
devote himself to his money-making and to the weaving of the web that
was to destroy his rival, Edward Cossey, with a mind a little less
preoccupied with other cares.

Meanwhile, things at the Castle were going very pleasantly for
everybody. The Squire was as happy in attending to the various details
connected with the transfer of the mortgages as though he had been
lending thirty thousand pounds instead of borrowing them. The great
George was happy in the accustomed flow of cash, that enabled him to
treat Janter with a lofty scorn not unmingled with pity, which was as
balm to his harassed soul, and also to transact an enormous amount of
business in his own peculiar way with men up trees and otherwise. For
had he not to stock the Moat Farm, and was not Michaelmas at hand?

Ida, too, was happy, happier than she had been since her brother's
death, for reasons that have already been hinted at. Besides, Mr.
Edward Cossey was out of the way, and that to Ida was a very great
thing, for his presence to her was what a policeman is to a ticket-of-
leave man--a most unpleasant and suggestive sight. She fully realised
the meaning and extent of the bargain into which she had entered to
save her father and her house, and there lay upon her the deep shadow
of evil that was to come. Every time she saw her father bustling about
with his business matters and his parchments, every time the universal
George arrived with an air of melancholy satisfaction and a long list
of the farming stock and implements he had bought at some neighbouring
Michaelmas sale, the shadow deepened, and she heard the clanking of
her chains. Therefore she was the more thankful for her respite.

Harold Quaritch was happy too, though in a somewhat restless and
peculiar way. Mrs. Jobson (the old lady who attended to his wants at