Scruby's manner
to him, something of mingled impatience and familiarity, which made
him feel that he had fallen in the attorney's estimation. It was not
that the lawyer thought him to be less honourable, or less clever,
than he had before thought him; but that the man was like a rat,
and knew a falling house by the instinct that was in him. So George
Vavasor cursed Mr Scruby, and calculated some method of murdering him
without detection.

The reader is not to suppose that the Member for the Chelsea
Districts had, in truth, resolved to gratify his revenge by
murder,--by murdering any of those persons whom he hated so
vigorously. He did not, himself, think it probable that he would
become a murderer. But he received some secret satisfaction in
allowing his mind to dwell upon the subject, and in making those
calculations. He reflected that it would not do to take off Scruby
and John Grey at the same time, as it would be known that he was
connected with both of them; unless, indeed, he was to take off a
third person at the same time,--a third person, as to the expediency
of ending whose career he made his calculations quite as often as he
did in regard to any of those persons whom he cursed so often. It
need hardly be explained to the reader that this third person was the
sitting Member for the Chelsea Districts.

As he was himself in want of instant ready money Mr Scruby's
proposition that he should leave the four bills at his own bankers',
to be collected when they came to maturity, did not suit him. He
doubted much, also, whether at the end of the fourteen days the money
would be forthcoming. Alice would be driven to tell her father,
in order that the money might be procured, and John Vavasor would
probably succeed in putting impediments in the way of the payment.
He must take the bills into the City, and do the best there that he
could with them. He was too late for this to-day, and therefore he
went to his lodgings, and then down to the House. In the House he
sat all the night with his hat over his eyes, making those little
calculations of which I have spoken.

"You have heard the news; haven't you?" said Mr Bott to him,
whispering in his ear.

"News; no. I haven't heard any news."

"Finespun has resigned, and Palliser is at this moment with the Duke
of St Bungay in the Lords' library."

"They may both be at the bottom of the Lords' fishpond, for what I
care," said Vavasor.

"That's nonsense, you know," said