He thought over it, again and again; and whenever the improbabilities, which were not thinly mingled with the composition of his suspicions, came across his mind, and made him begin to doubt if he were right, he set against them, on the other hand, all the reasons that existed for believing that the money could not have been left by Beauchamp, and called to mind also the words of his sister. "How could such a suspicion enter her mind," he asked himself, "unless she had discovered something to make her believe that Lord Ashborough and his lawyer were bent upon her family's ruin?" and, as he thus thought, he would have given worlds for a few minutes' conversation with Blanche, longing for it, of course, the more eagerly on account of its impossibility. Whichever way he turned, there were improbabilities to be encountered; and for long he vacillated between the opinion that Beauchamp had left the money in his chamber, and the suspicion that it had been placed there by some of the agents of Lord Ashborough, in order that a charge of robbery, embezzlement, or something equally criminal and degrading, might be raised upon the fact. Now the one predominated, now the other, and his mind continued tossed between the two, like a ship rolling in the long swell that follows a severe storm. At length he determined to write down all the causes of suspicion he had against the lawyer Peter Tims, in order to lay them clearly and substantially before the magistrates or the coroner, that his own established reputation and high character might be supported by strong proofs of animosity and vindictive feeling on the part of the accuser. Materials for writing were luckily to be found in his chamber, and he proceeded to place on paper the history of the whole transaction with Lord Ashborough up to the payment of the bill that morning; but the effect upon his own mind was fully as great as that which he intended to produce upon others; and, before he had concluded the paper, he was morally convinced, that by the instigation of Lord Ashborough's agent, and by his instigation alone, the money had been left in his room. He laid down the pen to combine in thought this certainty with the presumptions of guilt already brought forward against him; and, as he perceived how much might be made of the evidence already collected--how little opportunity the law allowed him for gathering the means of rebutting the accusation--and what a facility unbounded wealth, great influence, and freedom from all restraint, gave to his enemy, he clasped his hands and gave himself up to despair.