never meant to use it. His only reason for
accepting it had been that he had not found the courage to declare his
true position to his old friend and school companion. Perhaps, he told
himself (trying to silence and cajole that inward monitor and accuser
who would not be silenced or cajoled), perhaps if Brown had been less
confident and truthful--if he had had less faith in his old companion's
powers as a man of business--it would have come easier to tell the
truth. And how futile a thing it was to stave off discovery for a single
day! How doubly ashamed he would have to feel after that poor pretence
of responsible solidity! If he had only been disposed to be tempted at
all--here surely was an added reason for yielding to temptation.

Obviously the first, and, indeed, the only thing to be done, was to
bank this money in Brown's name, and so have done with it; and yet
any feeling of haste in that respect would seem to imply a fear of
temptation, which he was, of course, quite resolute not to feel. He was
not going any more to run away from his own suspicion of himself than
he would have run from another man's. So, in and out, and up and down,
contradicting himself at every turning, with an underlying surety in his
mind so fast rooted and so dreadful that he did not dare to look at it.

When the adieux were being said between the old friends, Mr. James
Hornett had slid noiselessly downstairs, his mind inflated by pride.
He was not proud of having played the eavesdropper, for even in Mr.
Hornett's economy of things, that was an act to be proud of; but he was
very proud, indeed, to be associated with a gentleman so magnificently
respected as Mr. Bommaney. There were not so very many people, he
told himself, even in the City of London, which was full of wealth and
probity, into whose hands so large a sum would be placed with so little
a sense of the necessity of precaution. He felt as if he himself had
been treated in this majestic manner, and the feeling warmed his heart.
He bowed Mr. Brown from the office door with an _empressement_ which he
feared a moment later might almost have betrayed him, and he went about
his duties for the rest of the day in a mood of unusual contentment. The
earlier memory of his employer's disturbance crossed him sometimes, and
always excited his curiosity; but the later feeling dominated him. He
was delighted by his association with a concern so eminently respectable
as that of Bommaney, Waite,