"Stop, stop, you rash, mad fool!" cried the old man excitedly. "Look here, Frank Marr: you have not a penny; your mother is almost starving; you are living together in a beggarly second-floor room at a tallow-chandler's. You see I know all! You are suffering the poor old lady's murmurs day by day, and she reproaches you for wasting her little all in your business. Look here: be a man, and not a love-sick boy. I'll be frank with you. Mr Brough has proposed, and I approve of him for a son-in-law. He is elderly, but a better-hearted man does not exist; and you will have the satisfaction of knowing that May has gone to a good home; while you have the chance, and at once, of doing your duty by your old mother. She wants change of air, Frank, and more nourishment. Five hundred pounds clear, Frank, to start with, and on your obtaining one name, one respectable name, beside your own, I'll advance you five hundred more--at five per cent, Frank, my good fellow-- at five per cent.--a thing I never before did in my life. I'll do it at once, this very hour, and you can pay the cheque into a banker's, start a new account, and a prosperous one. There, I'll find you a name--your uncle, Benjamin Marr; I'll take him; he's a respectable man, and good for five hundred pounds. He'll do that for you. Now, my good lad, sit down and accept my offer." "Does the devil tempt men still in human form?" gasped Frank, as with veins starting he stood panting for breath before the old man. "Pooh! nonsense! absurd! Now, how can you talk such silly book-trash, Frank Marr? I thought five years with me as clerk would have made another man of you. You ought never to have left me. Throw all that folly aside, and look the matter in the face like a man. Now you see how calm and how lenient I am. I might play the tyrant, and say that May shall be Mr Brough's wife, and all that sort of thing; but I want to spare everybody's feelings. I don't want any scenes. Come, now: you give her up; you will write to her, eh?" Frank Marr's voice was hoarse as he spoke; for he had felt the old man's words burning as it were into his brain, as scene after scene presented itself to his imagination. There on one side wealth, prosperity, comfort for the old and ailing woman whom he had, as he told himself, in an evil hour robbed of the comforts of her declining years; a new career, and the means to pay off that other ten shillings in the pound, so that he could once more hold up his head amongst his fellow-men. On the other side, the sweet, loving face of May Richards, whom he thought he loved as man never yet loved. He told himself that without a moment's hesitation he should defy the temptation to gain a hold; but for all that he temporised, and John Richards saw it, and stretched out his hand to take a pen. "But you will give me time to recover myself?" said Frank. "What for? I don't understand," said Richards. "For May's sake," pleaded Frank.