of any higher
passion, and he plotted by night and managed by day to get his affairs
into a position in which he could leave. He meant to follow Albert and
Katy, and somewhere and somehow, by working on Katy's sympathies, to
carry off the "stakes," as he expressed it. He almost ceased trifling,
and even his cronies came to believe that he was really in love. They saw
signs of intense and genuine feeling, and they mistook its nature. Mrs.
Ferret expressed her sympathy for him--the poor man really loved Kate,
and she believed that Kate had a right to marry anybody she pleased. She
did not know what warrant there was in Scripcherr for a brother's
exercising any authority. She thought Mrs. Plausaby ought to have brought
up her son to have more respect for her authority, and to hold
Scripcherral views. If he were her son, now! What she would have done
with him in that case never fully appeared; for Mrs. Ferret could not
bring herself to complete the sentence. She only said subjunctively: "If
he were _my_ son, now!" Then she would break off and give her head two or
three awful and ominous shakes. What would have happened if such a young
man as Albert had been her son, it would be hard to tell. Something
unutterably dreadful, no doubt.

Even the charms of Miss Minorkey were not sufficient to detain Albert in
his eager haste and passionate determination to rescue Katy. But to go,
he must have money; to get money, he must collect it from Plausaby, or at
least get a land-warrant with which he could pre-empt his claim. Then he
would mortgage his land for money to pay his traveling expenses. But it
was so much easier to lend money to Plausaby, Esq., than it was to
collect it. Plausaby, Esq., was always just going to have the money;
Plausaby, Esq., had ever ready so many excuses for past failure, and so
many assurances of payment in the immediate future, that Charlton was
kept hoping and waiting in agony from week to week. He knew that he was
losing ground in the matter of Westcott and Katy. She was again grieving
over Smith's possible suicide, was again longing for the cheerful rattle
of flattery and nonsense which rendered the Privileged Infant so
diverting even to those who hated him, much more to her who loved him.

Albert's position was the more embarrassing that he was obliged to spend
a part of his time on his claim to maintain a residence. One night, after
having suffered a disappointment for the fifth time in the matter of