swindlers and rogues do very dirty tricks,
and we are apt to picture to ourselves a certain amount of gusto
and delight on the part of the swindlers in the doing of them. In
this, I think we are wrong. The poor, broken, semi-genteel beggar,
who borrows half-sovereigns apiece from all his old acquaintances,
knowing that they know that he will never repay them, suffers a
separate little agony with each petition that he makes. He does not
enjoy pleasant sailing in this journey which he is making. To be
refused is painful to him. To get his half sovereign with scorn is
painful. To get it with apparent confidence in his honour is almost
more painful. "D---- it," he says to himself on such rare occasions,
"I will pay that fellow;" and yet, as he says it, he knows that he
never will pay even that fellow. It is a comfortless unsatisfying
trade, that of living upon other people's money.

How was George Vavasor to make his first step towards getting his
hand into his cousin's purse? He had gone to her asking for her
love, and she had shuddered when he asked her. That had been the
commencement of their life under their new engagement. He knew very
well that the money would be forthcoming when he demanded it,--but
under their present joint circumstances, how was he to make the
demand? If he wrote to her, should he simply ask for money, and make
no allusion to his love? If he went to her in person, should he make
his visit a mere visit of business,--as he might call on his banker?

He resolved at last that Kate should do the work for him. Indeed,
he had felt all along that it would be well that Kate should act as
ambassador between him and Alice in money matters, as she had long
done in other things. He could talk to Kate as he could not talk to
Alice;--and then, between the women, those hard money necessities
would be softened down by a romantic phraseology which he would not
himself know how to use with any effect. He made up his mind to see
Kate, and with this view he went down to Westmoreland; and took
himself to a small wayside inn at Shap among the fells, which had
been known to him of old. He gave his sister notice that he would be
there, and begged her to come over to him as early as she might find
it possible on the morning after his arrival. He himself reached the
place late in the evening by train from London. There is a station
at Shap, by which the railway company no doubt conceives that it
has conferred on that some