you."

Randal left the room.

The baron sat thoughtful. "It is true," said he to himself, "this young
man is the next of kin to the Hazeldean estate, if Frank displease his
father sufficiently to lose his inheritance; that must be the clever
boy's design. Well, in the long-run, I should make as much, or more, out
of him than out of the spendthrift Frank. Frank's faults are those of
youth. He will reform and retrench. But this man! No, I shall have him
for life. And should he fail in this project, and have but this
encumbered property--a landed proprietor mortgaged up to his ears--why,
he is my slave, and I can foreclose when I wish, or if he prove useless;
--no, I risk nothing. And if I did--if I lost L10,000--what then? I can
afford it for revenge!--afford it for the luxury of leaving Audley
Egerton alone with penury and ruin, deserted, in his hour of need, by the
pensioner of his bounty, as he will be by the last friend of his youth,
when it so pleases me,--me whom he has called 'scoundrel'! and whom he--"
Levy's soliloquy halted there, for the servant entered to announce the
carriage. And the baron hurried his band over his features, as if to
sweep away all trace of the passions that distorted their smiling
effrontery. And so, as he took up his cane and gloves, and glanced at
the glass, the face of the fashionable usurer was once more as varnished
as his boots.




CHAPTER XIX.