a man who should have been altogether powerless in such a matter, buying horses, and arranging about past due-bills? He did not reconcile it to his conscience. Mr. Crawley had been right when he told him that he was a castaway.
Lord Lufton, whose anger during the whole interview had been extreme, and who had become more angry the more he talked, had now walked once or twice up and down the room, and as he so walked the idea did occur to him that he had been unjust. He had come there with the intention of exclaiming against Sowerby, and of inducing Robarts to convey to that gentleman that if he, Lord Lufton, were made to undergo any farther annoyance about this bill, the whole affair should be thrown into the lawyer's hands; but instead of doing this, he had brought an accusation against Robarts. That Robarts had latterly become Sowerby's friend rather than his own in all these horrid money-dealings had galled him, and now he had expressed himself in terms much stronger than he had intended to use.
"As to you personally, Mark," he said, coming back to the spot on which Robarts was standing, "I do not wish to say any thing that shall annoy you."
"You have said quite enough, Lord Lufton."
"You can not be surprised that I should be angry and indignant at the treatment I have received."
"You might, I think, have separated in your mind those who have wronged you, if there has been such wrong, from those who have only endeavored to do your will and pleasure for you. That I, as a clergyman, have been very wrong in taking any part whatsoever in these matters, I am well aware. That, as a man, I have been outrageously foolish in lending my name to Mr. Sowerby, I also know well enough: it is perhaps as well that I should be told of this somewhat rudely, but I certainly did not expect the lesson to come from you."
"Well, there has been mischief enough. The question is, What we had better now both do?"
"You have said what you mean to do. You will put the affair into the hands of your lawyer."
"Not with any object of exposing you."
"Exposing me, Lord Lufton! Why, one would think that I had had the handling of your money."
