And he clapped Bertie on the shoulder, grateful for the life of good fellowship they had enjoyed within those walls, and feeling a little compassion for the poor youth who took so kindly to the good gifts of wealth, and who had, alas! no wealth to procure them with. However, he penetrated no further into Bertie's state of mind; he had always had a turn for a Bohemian existence: he had known luxury after living in misery; now life must be a little less easy for him again. That was all. Bertie, on his part, horrified by the heartless villany of his first reflections, allowed himself to slide on day by day, with no further thought of his various plots. He sometimes even had a naïve belief that at the last moment fortune would look on him with favour: his Fatalism was like a form of worship, giving him strength and hope. VI. However, a moment came when he thought all hope lost; the danger was pressing and imminent. "Bertie," said Westhove, who had just come home in some excitement, "to-morrow you can find some employment to suit you, I think. Tayle--you know, our friend at the club--tells me that he wants to find a secretary for his father, Lord Tayle. The old man lives on his place, up in Northumberland; he is always ailing, and sometimes tiresome, still, it seems to me that you will not easily get such another chance. You will have a salary of eighty pounds, and live in the house of course. I should have spoken of you to Tayle at once, but that you begged me long ago--" "Then you did not mention my name?" said Bertie, hastily and almost offended. "No," replied Frank, surprised at his tone. "I could make no overtures till I had spoken to you. But make up your mind at once, for Tayle has two other men in his eye already. If you can decide at once I will go back to Tayle this minute: my cab is waiting." And he took up his hat. Eighty pounds, and a position as secretary, with free quarters at the Castle! How the splendour of such an offer would have dazzled Bertie not so very long since, in America. But now-- "My dear Frank," he said, very coldly, "I am very much obliged for your kind intentions, but, pray, take no trouble on my account. I cannot accept the place. Dismiss your cab--" "What!" cried his friend, in utter amazement. "Will you not at least think it over?" "Thank you very much. If you have nothing better to offer me than to become the servant of the father of a man with whom I have been intimate as an equal, I can only say, Thank you for nothing. I am not going to shut myself up in a country-house, and scribble for an ailing, fractious old man, for a pittance of eighty pounds a year. And what would Tayle think of me? He has always known me as your friend, and we have been familiar on that footing; and now he is to see me his father's hired menial! I cannot say that you have much delicate feeling, Frank."