"Oh, content you, sir," replied Foster, "there is a change since you
knew the English world; and there are those who can hold their way
through the boldest courses, and the most secret, and yet never a
swaggering word, or an oath, or a profane word in their conversation."
"That is to say," replied Lambourne, "they are in a trading copartnery,
to do the devil's business without mentioning his name in the firm?
Well, I will do my best to counterfeit, rather than lose ground in this
new world, since thou sayest it is grown so precise. But, Anthony, what
is the name of this nobleman, in whose service I am to turn hypocrite?"
"Aha! Master Michael, are you there with your bears?" said Foster, with
a grim smile; "and is this the knowledge you pretend of my concernments?
How know you now there is such a person IN RERUM NATURA, and that I have
not been putting a jape upon you all this time?"
"Thou put a jape on me, thou sodden-brained gull?" answered Lambourne,
nothing daunted. "Why, dark and muddy as thou think'st thyself, I
would engage in a day's space to sec as clear through thee and thy
concernments, as thou callest them, as through the filthy horn of an old
stable lantern."
At this moment their conversation was interrupted by a scream from the
next apartment.
"By the holy Cross of Abingdon," exclaimed Anthony Foster, forgetting
his Protestantism in his alarm, "I am a ruined man!"
So saying, he rushed into the apartment whence the scream issued,
followed by Michael Lambourne. But to account for the sounds which
interrupted their conversation, it is necessary to recede a little way
in our narrative.
It has been already observed, that when Lambourne accompanied Foster
into the library, they left Tressilian alone in the ancient parlour. His
dark eye followed them forth of the apartment with a glance of contempt,
a part of which his mind instantly transferred to himself, for having
stooped to be even for a moment their familiar companion. "These are the
associates, Amy"--it was thus he communed with himself--"to which
thy cruel levity--thine unthinking and most unmerited falsehood, has
condemned him of whom his friends once hoped far other things, and who
now scorns himself, as he will be scorned by others, for the baseness
he stoops to for the love of thee! But I will not leave the pursuit of
thee, once the object of my purest and most devoted affection, though
to me thou canst henceforth be nothing but a thing to weep over. I will
save thee from thy betrayer, and from thyself; I will restore thee to
thy parent--to thy God. I cannot bid the bright star again sparkle in
the sphere it has shot from, but--"