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 ten thousand pounds--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 hand 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. When a clever man resolves on a villanous action, he hastens, by the exercise of his cleverness, to get rid of the sense of his villany. With more than his usual alertness, Randal employed the next hour or two in ascertaining how far Baron Levy merited the character he boasted, and how far his word might be his bond. He repaired to young men whom he esteemed better judges on these points than Spendquick and Borrowell--young men who resembled the Merry Monarch, inasmuch as "They never said a foolish thing, And never did a wise one."