“I don’t think Marie’s a bad sort, after all,” he said at last. “Old Moorpark had a deal the best of the bargain. I haven’t anything to say against them: they cut Clo long enough ago, and quite right too. She’s a devil! What that gal has cost me!”

There was another fit of reflection here, during which Mr Elbraham threw the end of his cigar into the waste-paper basket, and lit another, longer and stouter than the last, after taking a band of white and gold paper from around its middle.

“Then there’s Master Arthur Litton,” he said. “Pitched me over as soon as he’d married his rich wife. Called me an Israelitish humbug. Yes, conceited fool. Forgot all about his paper, and how I had helped him. Regularly cut me dead. Nice bit of money he had with Lady Anna Maria Morton, but he has made it fly, and all he could finger has gone. Wait a bit! I’ll have him on his knees. He’ll talk about Shylock then, eh? Only wait! I’ll have something better than a pound of flesh.”

He chuckled and smoked for some minutes, and then the smoke began to come in longer puffs, the lines marked by his triumph and mirth disappeared, and he glared and rolled his unpleasantly prominent eyes.

“Curse him!” he cried at length hoarsely. “He hasn’t a clear hundred to bless himself with, and I hold his paper for thousands. I believe it was with my money he carried off Clo. Well, let him have her. I’ve had enough of the wicked devil. Let him have her. Ha! ha! ha! My grand Major Malpas in the sheriffs hands, and Clo in lodgings without a penny! I needn’t want to trouble myself any more.”

The picture he mentally drew was so satisfactory that he indulged in another hoarse hollow laugh that was ugly upon the ear.

Then he carefully gathered together the three little batches of bills and secured each lot with an elastic band, before placing them in the pocket-book he carried in his breast, buttoned them up tightly, as if they were the greatest treasures he possessed, and ended by locking up the bulky case.

“Ha!” he said, rising, “I’m sorry for poor Major Malpas. I wonder whether that chap Glen will get the step up. What a lovely invention a piece of paper is!”

Volume Three – Chapter Nineteen.
Last Words

The result of Elbraham’s consideration of the acceptances can be briefly told. There were sale bills out before long at Lady Littletown’s bijou residence at Hampton, and also at Lady Anna Maria Morton’s house in Bryanston Square.

The former lady had been in her carriage, and called upon Elbraham at his City office, and he laughed and asked her to take wine and biscuits, which she did, feeling sure that she could persuade him to make some arrangement to give her time; but as soon as this was demanded, Elbraham, who had a tight hold upon her ladyship’s property, politely told her, but in coarser language, that he would see her condemned first.

Mr Arthur Litton also, seeing that he had been going too fast, called upon the financier, who seemed delighted to see him, and offered him a very choice cigar; but as to leniency, Elbraham was as immovable as the Rock of Gibraltar, so Mr Arthur Litton left, saying strange things, and went and placed his affairs in a solicitor’s hands.

Major Malpas fared worst, for if ever man was socially ruined it was he. Elbraham seemed to spare no pains to weave a strong network round him, in which he buzzed till he got free, but only to skulk about the Continent, save when he paid a stolen visit to his native shore.

In company with Clotilde?

By no means, for their intimacy soon came to an end, and news reached the private apartments at Hampton Court that the dove which had left that dovecote had further besmirched her beautiful plumage. The honourable ladies, however, spoke of her in the future as dead, and by degrees became quite reconciled to Ruth’s marriage to Captain Glen, principally through the constant dropping of the water that is said to wear a stone.

The water dropped from the Honourable Isabella’s eyes, and the stone was her sister, who invited the happy pair down to Hampton Court to spend a few days at the Palace, where the Honourable Isabella’s heart would flutter and her hands shake, but all in a very innocent way, for her love for Marcus Glen had become subdued to one of a very motherly kind, even as another love was dead and buried in the past.

There was a change at the house in Wimpole Street. First one window used to have the shutters unclosed, then another and another; and at last it was noticed that the windows were cleaned. By the time John Huish had quite recovered from his injury, the place, though still suffering greatly from the want of paint, was so altered that, when the cab which had brought the convalescent and his young wife from the Waterloo Station, stopped, Huish had stared and told the driver to go on.

“This here’s the number, sir,” said the man sturdily; and so it proved, for just then Vidler opened the door, and they entered a house they hardly seemed to know.

There were voices, too, as well as an abundance of light in the house; and when the young couple, whose coming was expected, entered the drawing-room, it was to find quite a party assembled.

John Huish stopped short to gaze in wonderment, as Gertrude left his side, and ran forward to embrace a little thin old man, so grey and blanched that he looked almost ghostly as his white hands trembled over Gertrude and then were placed upon her head as she laid it against his breast.

The young man’s eyes turned sharply then to the panel in the wall, to see that it was closed and painted over.

“I’m very glad to see you, John Huish,” said a familiar voice, though, the next moment, as Gertrude rose to embrace her father, and the little white, bent old man stood up to limp painfully two or three steps to grasp both his hands.

John Huish could not speak, knowing what he did; and, pale and flushed by turns, he stood grasping the old man’s hands and thinking of how his father had robbed him of his love, almost of his life.

“My dear John,” he said, “you have taken my darling, and, as I have looked upon her always as my child, why, you must be my son. God bless you! The past is dead.”