outh. He will reform and retrench. But this man! No, I shall have
him for life. And should he fail in this project, and have but this
encumbered property--a landed proprietor mortgaged up to his ears--why,
he is my slave, and I can foreclose when I wish, or if he prove
useless;--no, I risk nothing. And if I did--if I lost L10,000--what
then? I can afford it for revenge!--afford it for the luxury of leaving
Audley Egerton alone with penury and ruin, deserted, in his hour of
need, by the pensioner of his bounty, as he will be by the last friend
of his youth, when it so pleases me,--me whom he has called 'scoundrel'!
and whom he--" Levy's soliloquy halted there, for the servant entered to
announce the carriage. And the baron hurried his band over his features,
as if to sweep away all trace of the passions that distorted their
smiling effrontery. And so, as he took up his cane and gloves, and
glanced at the glass, the face of the fashionable usurer was once more
as varnished as his boots.

CHAPTER XIX.

When a clever man resolves on a villanous action, he hastens, by the
exercise of his cleverness, to get rid of the sense of his villany. With
more than his usual alertness, Randal employed the next hour or two in
ascertaining how far Baron Levy merited the character he boasted, and
how far his word might be his bond. He repaired to young men whom
he esteemed better judges on these points than Spendquick and
Borrowell,--young men who resembled the Merry Monarch, inasmuch as--

"They never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one."

There are many such young men about town,--sharp and able in all affairs
except their own. No one knows the world better, nor judges of character
more truly, than your half-beggared roue. From all these Baron Levy
obtained much the same testimonials: he was ridiculed as a would-be
dandy, but respected as a very responsible man of business, and rather
liked as a friendly, accommodating species of the Sir Epicure Mammon,
who very often did what were thought handsome, liberal things; and, "in
short," said one of these experienced referees, "he is the best fellow
going--for a money-lender! You may always rely on what he promises, and
he is generally very forbearing and indulgent to us of good society;
perhaps for the same reason that our tailors are,--to send one of us to
prison would hurt his custom. His foible is to be thought a gentleman.
I believe, much as I supp