grily; "and when you see me so utterly deserted, too!"

"But where 's Jekyl? He ought to know how to manage this!"

"He has never been here since morning. His conduct is inexcusable!"

"And George?"

"Out the whole day!"

"And the 'Dalton'? for she has rather a good head, if I don't mistake
her."

"She took the carriage into town, and has not returned."

"By Jove! I'd write a line to Sir Stafford; I 'd tell him that I was
going for change of ah--, and all that sort of thing, to Como for a week
or two, and that these people were so pestering and pressing, and all
that; that, in fact, you were worried to death about it; and finding
that your means were so very limited--"

"But he has been most liberal. His generosity has been without bounds."

"So much the better; he'll come down all the readier now."

"I feel shame at such a course," said she, in a weak, faint voice.

"As I don't precisely know what that sensation is, I can't advise
against it; but it must needs be a very powerful emotion, if it prevent
you accepting money."

"Can you think of nothing else, Norwood?"

"To be sure I can--there are twenty ways to do the thing. Close the
shutters, and send for Buccellini; be ill dangerously ill and leave this
to-morrow, at daybreak; or give a ball, like Dashwood, and start when
the company are at supper. You lose the spoons and forks, to be sure;
but that can't be helped. You might try and bully them, too though
perhaps it 's late for that; and lastly and, I believe, best of all
raise a few hundreds, and pay them each something."

"But how or where raise the money?"

"Leave that to me, if it must be done. The great benefactor of mankind
was the fellow that invented bills. The glorious philanthropist that
first devised the bright expedient of living by paper, when bullion
failed, was a grand and original genius. How many a poor fellow might
have been rescued from the Serpentine by a few words scrawled over a
five-shilling stamp! What a turn to a man's whole earthly career has
been often given, as his pen glided over the imaginative phrase
'I promise to pay'!"

Lady Hester paid no attention to the Viscount's moralizings. Shame
indignant shame monopolized all her feelings.

"Well," said she, at last, "I believe it must be so. I cannot endure
this any longer. Jekyl has behaved shamefully; and George I 'll never
forgive. They ought to have taken care of all this. And now, Norwood, to
procure the money what i