"Pay off everything?" he shrieked. "I don't believe it: it's a lie--a swindle. Not have Dene? I'll have it in spite of you all!" The churned foam flew from his bulbous lips, as from the jaws of a baited boar. The silent spectator in the window turned round, then, and stood contemplating the group, not striving to repress a harsh, scornful laugh. That filled up the measure of the unhappy Israelite's frenzy. He made a sort of blind plunge forward, shaking off the warning fingers with which Davidson sought to detain him. "D--n you, let me go," he howled out. "Who is that man? What does he do here? I _will_ know." The person addressed strode on slowly till he came close to the speaker, and looked him in the face, still with the same cruel laugh on his own. "I'll answer you," he said. "I was christened Raoul Delamere, but they call me Lord Clydesdale now; and I hope to marry Mr. Vavasour's only daughter. I am here--because I am infidel enough to enjoy seeing a Jew taken on the hip. I wouldn't have missed this--to clear off the biggest of your mortgages. So you fancied you were going to reign at Dene? Not if you had had another hundred thousand at your back. If we only have warning, the old blood can hold its own, and beat the best of you yet. Mr. Faulkner, don't you think you had better pay him, and let him go?" The change of tone in those last words, from brutal disdain to studied courtesy, was the very climax of insult. It was an unworthy triumph, no doubt, but a very complete one. The Earl remained as much master of the position as ever was Front de Boeuf. The Jew was utterly annihilated. To have come there with the power of life and death in his hand, and now to be treated as an ordinary tradesman presenting a Christmas bill! He staggered back step by step, and sunk into a chair, dropping his head, and groaning heavily. Davidson had recovered himself by this time. The elder lawyer only sat silent, and scandalized, lifting his eyebrows in mute testimony against such unprofessional proceedings. "We can hardly conclude such important business to-day," Morris said. "My client's excitement is a sufficient excuse. We know your intentions now, Mr. Faulkner, and there is ample time to settle everything. I will call upon you at any time or place you like to name." So, after a few more words, it was settled. Ephraim Schmidt went out, like a man in a dream, from the house that he had hoped to call his own; only moaning under his breath, like a vanquished Shylock--"Let us go home, let us go home." The chief butler (who had been aware of the state of affairs throughout) dealt him the last blow in the hall, by inquiring with exquisite courtesy, "If he would take any luncheon before he went?" The miserable Hebrew quivered all over, as a victim at the stake might shrink under the last ingenuity of torture. Truly, the meanest of the many debtors who had sued him in vain for mercy, need not have envied the usurer then.