ext week,
and it would be also necessary that he should provide for taking up
that bill, amounting to ninety-two pounds, which he had given to the
landlord of the "Handsome Man." In short, it would be well that he
should borrow a thousand pounds from Alice, and as he did not wish
that the family attorney of the Vavasors should be employed to
raise it, he communicated to Mr Scruby as much of his plans as was
necessary,--feeling more hesitation in doing it than might have
been expected from him. When he had done so, he was very intent on
explaining also that the money taken from his cousin, and future
bride, would be repaid to her out of the property in Westmoreland,
which was,--did he say settled on himself? I am afraid he did.

"Yes, yes;--a family arrangement," said Mr Scruby, as he
congratulated him on his proposed marriage. Mr Scruby did not care a
straw from what source the necessary funds might be drawn.

CHAPTER XXXVI

John Grey Goes a Second Time to London

Early in that conversation which Mr Vavasor had with his daughter,
and which was recorded a few pages back, he implored her to pause a
while before she informed Mr Grey of her engagement with her cousin.
Nothing, however, on that point had been settled between them. Mr
Vavasor had wished her to say that she would not write till he should
have assented to her doing so. She had declined to bind herself in
this way, and then they had gone off to other things;--to George
Vavasor's character and the disposition of her money. Alice, however,
had felt herself bound not to write to Mr Grey quite at once. Indeed,
when her cousin left her she had no appetite for writing such a
letter as hers was to be. A day or two passed by her in this way, and
nothing more was said by her or her father. It was now the middle of
January, and the reader may remember that Mr Grey had promised that
he would come to her in London in that month, as soon as he should
know that she had returned from Westmoreland. She must at any rate
do something to prevent that visit. Mr Grey would not come without
giving her notice. She knew enough of the habits of the man to be
sure of that. But she desired that her letter to him should be in
time to prevent his to her; so when those few days were gone, she sat
down to write without speaking to her father again upon the subject.

It was a terrible job;--perhaps the most difficult of all the
difficult tasks which her adverse fate had imposed u