ext morning I looks
into the paper--no deceit, sir--there was Lord Downy's name. Now,
to-morrow, when I'm introduced to him, don't you think I shall be able
to diskiver whether he's the same man or not?"

"Vere's the tousand pound?" inquired Mr Methusaleh.

"My friend goes with me to-morrow to hand it over. Three hundred is to
be given up at Lord Downy's hotel in Oxford Street, and the balance at
Mr Fitzalbert's chambers in Westminster, an hour afterwards, when I
receive the appointment."

"My dear Aby, I von't beat about the bush with you. I'm quite sure, my
child, ve should make it answer much better, if you'd let your father
advance the money. Doesn't it go agin the grain to vurk into the hands
of Christians against your own flesh and blood? If this Mr Fitzalbert
advances the money, depend upon it it's to make someting handsome by the
pargain. Let me go vith you to his lordship, and perhaps, if he's very
hard-up, he'll take seven hundred instead of the thousand. Ve'll divide
the three hundred between us. Don't you believe that your friend is
doing all this for love. Vot can he see, my darling, in your pretty
face, to take all this trouble for nothing? I shouldn't be at all
surprised if he's a blackguard, and means to take a cruel advantage of
his lordship's sitivation--give him perhaps only five hundred for his
tousand. Aby, let your ould father do an act of charity, and put two
hundred pounds into this poor gentleman's pockets."

Before Aby could reply to this benevolent appeal, a stop was put to the
interesting conversation, by a violent knocking at the door, on the part
of no less a gentleman than Warren de Fitzalbert himself.

CHAPTER II.

Whilst the domestic _tete-a-tete_, feebly described in the foregoing
chapter, was in progress, the nobleman, more than once referred to, was
passing miserable moments in his temporary lodgings at the Salisbury
Hotel, in Oxford Street. A more unhappy gentleman than Baron Downy it
would be impossible to find in or out of England. The inheritor of a
cruelly-burdened title, he had spent a life in adding to its
incumbrances, rather than in seeking to disentangle it from the meshes
in which it had been transmitted to him. In the freest country on the
globe, he had never known the bliss of liberty. He had moved about with
a drag-chain upon his spiritual and physical energies, as long as he
could remember his being. At school and at college, necessarily limited
in his allowanc