In thoroughly handsome chambers towards the west-end of London, fitted up with costly elegance, more in accordance (one would think) with a place consecrated to the refinements of life, than to business, there sat one morning a dark gentleman, of staid and respectable appearance. To look at his clean, smoothly shaven face, his grey hair, his gold-rimmed spectacles, his appearance altogether, every item of which carried respectability with it, you might have trusted the man at a first glance. In point of fact, he was got up to be trusted. A fire was pleasant on those spring mornings, and a large and clear one flamed in the burnished grate. Miniature statues, and other articles possessing, one must suppose, some rare excellence, gave to the room a refined look; and the venerable gentleman (venerable in sober respectability, you must understand, more than from age, for his years were barely fifty) sat enjoying its blaze, and culling choice morsels from the Times. The money article, the price of stock, a large insolvency case, and other news especially acceptable to men of business, were being eagerly read by him.

An architect might have taken a model of these chambers, so artistically were they arranged. A client could pass into any one of the three rooms, and not come out by the same door; he might reach them by the wide, handsome staircase, descend by means of a ladder, and emerge in a back street. Not absolutely a ladder, but a staircase so narrow as almost to deserve the name. It did happen, once in a way, that a gentleman might prefer that means of exit, even if he did not of entrance. These chambers were, not to keep you longer in suspense, the offices of the great bill-discounting firm, Trueworthy and Co.

One peculiar feature in their internal economy was, that no client ever got to see Mr. Trueworthy. He was too great a man to stoop to business in his own proper person. He was taking his pleasure in the East; or he was on a visit to some foreign court, the especial guest of its imperial head; or sojourning with his bosom friend the Duke of Dorsetshire at his shooting-box; or reposing at his own country seat; or ill in bed with gout. From one or other of these contingencies Mr. Trueworthy was invariably invisible. It happened now and then that there was a disturbance in these elegant chambers, caused by some ill-bred and ill-advised gentleman, who persisted in saying that he had been hardly treated—in point of fact, ruined. One or two had, on these occasions, broadly asserted their conviction that there was no Mr. Trueworthy at all: but of course their ravings, whether on the score of their own wrongs, or on the non-existence of that estimable gentleman, whose fashionable movements might have filled a weekly column of the Court Circular, were taken for what they were worth.

In the years gone by—only a very few years, though—the firm had owned another head: at any rate, another name. A young, fair man, who had disdained the exclusiveness adopted by his successor, and deemed himself not too great a mortal to be seen of men. This unfortunate principal had managed his affairs badly. In some way or other he came to grief. Perhaps the blame lay in his youth. Some one was so wicked as to prefer against him a charge of swindling; and ill-natured tongues said it would go hard with him—fifteen years at least. What they meant by the last phrase, they best knew. Like many another charge, it never came to anything. The very hour before he would have been captured, he made his escape, and had never since been seen or heard of. Some surmised that he was dead, some that he was in hiding abroad: only one thing was certain—that into this country he could not again enter.

All that, however, was past and gone. The gentleman, Mr. Brompton, sitting at his ease over his newspaper, his legs stretched out to the blaze, was the confidential manager and head of the office. Half the applicants did not know but that he was its principal: strangers, at first, invariably believed that he was so. A lesser satellite, a clerk, or whatever he might be, sat in an outer room, and bowed in the clients, his bow showing far more deference to this gentleman than to the clients themselves. How could the uninitiated suppose that he was anything less than the principal?

On this morning there went up the broad staircase a gentleman whose remarkably good looks drew the eyes of the passers-by towards him, as he got out of the cab which brought him. The clerk took a hasty step forward to arrest his progress, for the gentleman was crossing the office with a bold step: and all steps might not be admitted to that inner room. The gentleman, however, put up his hand, as if to say, Don’t you know me? and went on. The clerk, who at the first moment had probably not had time to recognize him, threw open the inner door.

“Mr. George Godolphin, sir.”

Mr. George Godolphin strode on. He was evidently not on familiar terms with the gentleman who rose to receive him, for he did not shake hands with him. His tone and manner were courteous.

“Is Mr. Verrall here?”

“He is not here, Mr. Godolphin. I am not sure that he will be here to-day.”

“I must see him,” said George, firmly. “I have followed him to town to see him. You know that he came up yesterday?”

“Yes. I met him last night.”

“I should suppose, as he was sent for unexpectedly—which I hear was the case—that he was sent for on business; and therefore that he would be here to-day,” pursued George.

“I am not sure of it. He left it an open question.”

George looked uncommonly perplexed. “I must see him, and I must be back at Prior’s Ash during business hours to-day. I must catch the eleven down-train if possible.”

“Can I do for you as well as Mr. Verrall?” asked Mr. Brompton, after a pause.

“No, you can’t. Verrall I must see. It is very strange that you don’t know whether he is to be here or not.”

“It happens to-day that I do not know. Mr. Verrall left it last night, I say, an open question.”

“It is the loss of time that I am thinking of,” returned George. “You see if I go down now to his residence, he may have left it to come up here; and we should just miss each other.”

“Very true,” asserted Brompton.

George stood for a moment in thought, and then turned on his heel, and departed. “Do you know whether Mr. Verrall will be up this morning?” he asked of the clerk, as he passed through the outer room.

The clerk shook his head. “I am unable to say, sir.”

George went down to the cab, and entered it. “Where to, sir?” asked the driver, as he closed the door.

“The South-Western Railway.”

As the echo of George’s footsteps died away on the stairs, Mr. Brompton, first slipping the bolt of the door which led into the clerk’s room, opened the door of another room. A double door, thoroughly well padded, deadened all sound between the apartments. It was a larger and more luxurious room still. Two gentlemen were seated in it by a similarly bright fire: though, to look at the face of the one—a young man, whose handkerchief, as it lay carelessly on the table beside him, bore a viscount’s coronet—no one would have thought any fire was needed. His face was glowing, and he was talking in angry excitement, but with a tone and manner somewhat subdued, as if he were in the presence of a master, and dared not put forth his metal. In short, he looked something like a caged lion. Opposite to him, listening with cold, imperturbable courtesy, his face utterly impassive, as it ever was, his eyes calm, his yellow hair in perfect order, his moustache trimmed, his elbows resting on the arms of his chair, and the tips of his fingers meeting, on one of which fingers shone a monster diamond of the purest water, was Mr. Verrall. Early as the hour was, glasses and champagne stood on the table.

Mr. Brompton telegraphed a sign to Mr. Verrall, and he came out, leaving the viscount to waste his anger upon air. The viscount might rely on one thing: that it was just as good to bestow it upon air as upon Mr. Verrall, for all the impression it would make on the latter.

“Godolphin has been here,” said Mr. Brompton, keeping the doors, carefully closed.

“He has followed me to town, then! I thought he might do so. It is of no use my seeing him. If he won’t go deeper into the mire, why, the explosion must come.”

“He must go deeper into it,” remarked Mr. Brompton.

“He holds out against it, and words seem wasted on him. Where’s he gone now?”

“Down to your house, I expect. He says he must be back home to-day, but must see you first. I thought you would not care to meet him, so I said I didn’t know whether you’d be here or not.”

Mr. Verrall mused. “Yes, I’ll see him. I can’t deal with him altogether as I do with others. And he has been a lucky card to us.”

Mr. Verrall went back to his viscount, who by that time was striding explosively up and down the room. Mr. Brompton sat down to his paper again, and his interesting news of the Insolvency Court.

In one of the most charming villas on the banks of the Thames, a villa which literally lacked nothing that money could buy, sat Mrs. Verrall at a late breakfast, on that same morning. She jumped up with a little scream at the sight of George Godolphin crossing the velvet lawn.

“What bad news have you come to tell me? Is Charlotte killed? Or is Lady Godolphin’s Folly on fire?”

“Charlotte was well when I left her, and the Folly standing,” replied George, throwing care momentarily to the winds, as he was sure to do in the presence of a pretty woman.

“She will be killed, you know, some day with those horses of hers,” rejoined Mrs. Verrall. “What have you come for, then, at this unexpected hour? When Verrall arrived last night, he said you were giving a dinner at Prior’s Ash.”

“I want to see Verrall. Is he up yet?”

“Up! He was up and away ages before I awoke. He went up early to the office.”

George paused. “I have been to the office, and Mr. Brompton said he did not know whether he would be there to-day at all.”

“Oh, well, I don’t know,” returned Mrs. Verrall, believing she might have made an inconvenient admission. “When he goes up to town, I assume he goes to the office; but he may be bound to the wilds of Siberia for anything I can tell.”

“When do you expect him home?” asked George.

“I did not ask him,” carelessly replied Mrs. Verrall. “It may be to-day, or it may be next month. What will you take for breakfast?”

“I will not take anything,” returned George, holding out his hand to depart.

“But you are not going again in this hasty manner! What sort of a visit do you call this?”

“A hasty one,” replied George. “I must be at Prior’s Ash this afternoon. Any message to Charlotte?”

“Why—yes—I have,” said Mrs. Verrall, with some emphasis. “I was about to despatch a small parcel this very next hour to Charlotte, lay post. But—when shall you see her? To-night?”

“I can see her to-night if you wish it.”

“It would oblige me much. The truth is, it is something I ought to have sent yesterday, and I forgot it. Be sure and let her have it to-night.”

Mrs. Verrall rang, and a small packet, no larger than a bulky letter, was brought in. George took it, and was soon being whirled back to London.

He stepped into a cab at the Waterloo Station, telling the man he should have double pay if he drove at double speed: and it conveyed him to Mr. Verrall’s chambers.

George went straight to Mr. Brompton’s room, as before. That gentleman had finished his Times, and was buried deep in a pile of letters. “Is Mr. Verrall in now?” asked George.

“He is here now, Mr. Godolphin. He was here two minutes after you departed: it’s a wonder you did not meet.”

George knew the way to Mr. Verrall’s room, and was allowed to enter. Mr. Verrall, alone then, turned round with a cordial grasp.

“Holloa!” said he. “We somehow missed this morning. How are you?”

“I say, Verrall, how came you to play me such a trick as to go off in that clandestine manner yesterday?” remonstrated George. “You know the uncertainty I was in: that if I did not get what I hoped for, I should be on my beam ends?”

“My dear fellow, I supposed you had got it. Hearing nothing of you all day, I concluded it had come by the morning’s post.”

“It had not come then,” returned George, crustily. In spite of his blind trust in the unbleached good faith of Mr. Verrall, there were moments when a thought would cross him as to whether that gentleman had been playing a double game. This was one of them.

“I had a hasty summons, and was obliged to come away without delay,” explained Mr. Verrall. “I sent you a message.”

“Which I never received,” retorted George. “But the message is not the question. See here! A pretty letter, this, for a man to read. It came by the afternoon post.”

Mr. Verrall took the letter, and digested the contents deliberately; in all probability he had known their substance before. “What do you think of it?” demanded George.

“It’s unfortunate,” said Mr. Verrall.

“It’s ruin,” returned George.

“Unless averted. But it must be averted.”

“How?”

“There is one way, you know,” said Mr. Verrall, after a pause. “I have pointed it out to you already.”

“And I wish your tongue had been blistered, Verrall, before you ever had pointed it out to me!” foamed George. “There!”

Mr. Verrall raised his impassive eyebrows. “You must be aware——”

“Man!” interrupted George, his voice hoarse with emotion, as he grasped Mr. Verrall’s shoulder: “do you know that the temptation, since you suggested it, is ever standing out before me—an ignis fatuus, beckoning me on to it! Though I know that it would prove nothing but a curse to engulf me.”

“Here, George, take this,” said Mr. Verrall, pouring out a large tumbler of sparkling wine, and forcing it upon him. “The worst of you is, that you get so excited over things! and then you are sure to look at them in a wrong light. Just hear me for a moment. The pressure is all at this present moment, is it not? If you can lift it, you will recover yourself fast enough. Has it ever struck you,” Mr. Verrall added, somewhat abruptly, “that your brother is fading?” Remembering the scene with his brother the previous night, George looked very conscious. He simply nodded an answer.

“With Ashlydyat yours, you would recover yourself almost immediately. There would positively be no risk.”

“No risk!” repeated George, with emphasis.

“I cannot see that there would be any. Everything’s a risk, if you come to that. We are in risk of earthquakes, of a national bankruptcy, of various other calamities: but the risk that would attend the step I suggested to you is really so slight as not to be called a risk. It never can be known: the chances are a hundred thousand to one.”

“But there remains the one,” persisted George.

“To let an exposÉ come would be an act of madness, at the worst look out: but it is madness and double madness when you may so soon succeed to Ashlydyat.”

“Oblige me by not counting upon that, Verrall,” said George. “I hope, ill as my brother appears to be, that he may live yet.”

“I don’t wish to count upon it,” returned Mr. Verrall. “It is for you to count upon it, not me. Were I in your place, I should not blind my eyes to the palpable fact. Look here: your object is to get out of this mess?”

“You know it is,” said George.

“Very well. I see but one way for you to do it. The money must be raised, and how is that to be done? Why, by the means I suggest. It will never be known. A little time, and things can be worked round again.”

“I have been hoping to work things round this long while,” said George. “And they grow worse instead of better.”

“Therefore I say that you should not close your eyes to the prospect of Ashlydyat. Sit down. Be yourself again, and let us talk things over quietly.”

“You see, Verrall, the risk falls wholly upon me.”

“And, upon whom the benefit, for which the risk will be incurred?” pointedly returned Mr. Verrall.

“It seems to me that I don’t get the lion’s share of these benefits,” was George’s remark.

“Sit down, I say. Can’t you be still? Here, take some more wine. There: now let us talk it over.”

And talk it over they did, as may be inferred. For it was a full hour afterwards when George came out. He leaped into the cab, which had waited, telling the man that he must drive as if he were going through fire and water. The man did so: and George arrived at the Paddington station just in time to lose his train.