“Show him into Mr. Jones’s room,” said Frederick, with an effort. Jones was absent on leave, and his room was a safe place, where a disagreeable visitor might be encountered without any more harm than was involved in the sight of him. Then he did what he could to prepare himself for the meeting. He buttoned his coat, and took his hat and cane by way of showing that he was about to leave the office, and had little time for colloquy. He tried to make up in his mind in desperate haste what to say about the money, and he tried at the same time, the one attempt mingling with the other, and confusing it, to make up some story for home, to elicit a few more of those most necessary banknotes. It is dreadful to think how many well-looking, faultlessly-dressed young gentlemen in the public service like Frederick Eastwood, looking self-possessed enough for any emergency, and superior enough to crush into insignificance the greater part of their fellow-creatures, should be secretly occupied in making up hasty and clumsy inventions like this, to stave off the paying of money, or to coax it out of well-guarded pockets. Frederick walked along the passage as slowly as he could towards Jones’s room. Wretched little Innocent! it was all her fault that he had been seduced into this expenditure, and put in this man’s power. Frederick remembered vividly how objectionable the man’s loud voice and coarse geniality had been to him when, with a bad headache and a sinking heart, he sat and studied “Bradshaw,” and counted out his last francs in the Paris hotel. What must he seem now, when he no longer had it in his power to be of use, and appeared only in the guise of a creditor, always an odious character to appear in? Frederick walked into the room at last with something of the feelings which must move the poor wretch who marches to his execution. Could he have followed his own will, ropes would not have sufficed to drag him whither his reluctant feet now paced with that appearance of voluntary motion which is often such a miserable pretence. To how many places do we go thus, pretending to do it of our own free will--to balls and dinner parties, and other festive meetings, to our own marriage sometimes, to every kind of act in which we are--heaven help us!--free agents, as the jargon goes. Frederick’s feelings were doubtless exaggerated, for, after all, he owed this man not much over fifty pounds. But then the man could tell things of him which he fondly hoped were known to no one in his own sphere--as if there was anything in any man’s life of a disagreeable or disgraceful kind which was not known! Batty met him with the greatest cordiality, with a large red dirty hand outstretched, and smiles of genial welcome.