hase-money.'

'Of course he does, Mr Brehgert. That's what made it so hard.'

'I can't even yet quite understand how it was with him, or why he took
upon himself to spend such an enormous deal of money here in London.
His business was quite irregular, but there was very much of it, and
some of it immensely profitable. He took us in completely.'

'I suppose so.'

'It was old Mr Todd that first took to him;--but I was deceived as much
as Todd, and then I ventured on a speculation with him outside of our
house. The long and short of it is that I shall lose something about
sixty thousand pounds.'

'That's a large sum of money.'

'Very large;--so large as to affect my daily mode of life. In my
correspondence with your daughter, I considered it to be my duty to
point out to her that it would be so. I do not know whether she told
you.'

This reference to his daughter for the moment altogether upset Mr
Longestaffe. The reference was certainly most indelicate, most
deserving of censure; but Mr Longestaffe did not know how to pronounce
his censure on the spur of the moment, and was moreover at the present
time so very anxious for Brehgert's assistance in the arrangement of
his affairs that, so to say, he could not afford to quarrel with the
man. But he assumed something more than his normal dignity as he
asserted that his daughter had never mentioned the fact.

'It was so,' said Brehgert

'No doubt;'--and Mr Longestaffe assumed a great deal of dignity.

'Yes; it was so. I had promised your daughter when she was good enough
to listen to the proposition which I made to her, that I would
maintain a second house when we should be married.'

'It was impossible,' said Mr Longestaffe,--meaning to assert that such
hymeneals were altogether unnatural and out of the question.

'It would have been quite possible as things were when that
proposition was made. But looking forward to the loss which I
afterwards anticipated from the affairs of our deceased friend, I
found it to be prudent to relinquish my intention for the present, and
I thought myself bound to inform Miss Longestaffe.'

'There were other reasons,' muttered Mr Longestaffe, in a suppressed
voice, almost in a whisper,--in a whisper which was intended to convey
a sense of present horror and a desire for future reticence.

'There may have been; but in the last letter which Miss Longestaffe
did me the honour to write to me,--a letter with which I have not the
sligh