cumstances
would break off an acquaintance to me so valuable. Forgive me if I
did imagine that an intercourse between mind and mind could be equally
carried on, whether the mere body were lodged in a palace or a hovel;"
and then suddenly changing his tone into that of affectionate warmth,
Crauford continued, "My dear Glendower, my dear friend, I would say, if
I durst, is not your pride rather to blame here? Believe me, in my turn,
I fully comprehend and bow to it; but it wounds me beyond expression.
Were you in your proper station, a station much higher than my own,
I would come to you at once, and proffer my friendship: as it is, I
cannot; but your pride wrongs me, Glendower,--indeed it does."

And Crauford turned away, apparently in the bitterness of wounded
feeling.

Glendower was touched: and his nature, as kind as it was proud,
immediately smote him for conduct certainly ungracious and perhaps
ungrateful. He held out his hand to Crauford; with the most respectful
warmth that personage seized and pressed it: and from that time
Crauford's visits appeared to receive a license which, if not perfectly
welcome, was at least never again questioned.

"I shall have this man now," muttered Crauford, between his ground
teeth, as he left the house, and took his way to his counting-house.
There, cool, bland, fawning, and weaving in his close and dark mind
various speculations of guilt and craft, he sat among his bills and
gold, like the very gnome and personification of that Mammon of gain to
which he was the most supple though concealed adherent.

Richard Crauford was of a new but not unimportant family. His father had
entered into commerce, and left a flourishing firm and a name of great
respectability in his profession to his son. That son was a man whom
many and opposite qualities rendered a character of very singular and
uncommon stamp. Fond of the laborious acquisition of money, he was
equally attached to the ostentatious pageantries of expense. Profoundly
skilled in the calculating business of his profession, he was devoted
equally to the luxuries of pleasure; but the pleasure was suited well
to the mind which pursued it. The divine intoxication of that love where
the delicacies and purities of affection consecrate the humanity of
passion was to him a thing of which not even his youngest imagination
had ever dreamed. The social concomitants of the wine-cup (which have
for the lenient an excuse, for the austere a temp