It was Morley who blushed now, for he felt that though he had been generous, he had not been altogether so generous as she supposed. He felt that the passions which man encourages, and thinks no evil, though subdued and kept down, might have had their share; and that those feelings had been there which we will not believe have power to sully till we place our own heart in contrast with something brighter than itself. He coloured, as we have said, and was somewhat confused; and, after promising to see her again on the following morning, and beseeching her to use every means to wring the required information from her brother, he left her, and returned thoughtfully to his temporary home. CHAPTER XII. The table was covered with notes, but they were all insignificant, and Morley glanced over them with an eye which shewed how abstracted the mind was, and how busy with other topics. He had thrown the last down, and, with his hand still resting on the table, was gazing forth into vacancy, when the door of the room opened, and Lieberg entered, with his usual gentlemanly, but impressive manner. "Well, Morley," he said, "I have arranged it all for you, as was proposed; these two men, Stallfed and Neville, had evidently heard all about you, so far as your being wealthy, young, and unacquainted with London; and they proposed to make a very pleasant speculation of Neville's quarrel with you, and share some five hundred pounds between them, or perhaps more; but the fact of your referring them to me, instead of some of your college companions, as they expected, has sadly disappointed them." "Why, how could they calculate so wildly?" exclaimed Morley. "They could never imagine that I was to be frightened into paying them money for the privilege of not fighting?" "Oh, no, no!" answered Lieberg; "that was not the way, at all. The way it was to be arranged was this. Stallfed was to treat you in the most gentlemanly manner, and no one can assume the tone of a high-bred gentleman better than he can, when he likes it. The slightest apology on your part was to be accepted; the Captain was to be smitten with high admiration of your gentlemanly bearing, and bold demeanour. You were to be invited to dinner, accommodated with champagne, and claret, perhaps a little laudanum, or some other exhilarating fluid; cards and dice were to be at your service--and the result was to be, the enriching of themselves, and the pillaging of you." "Why, how did you discover all this?" said Morley. "You certainly have some extraordinary way of getting at people's secrets!" "Not at all," replied Lieberg--"not at all; it is pure intuition, Ernstein. I know the whole thing, as well as if it had been done and I had seen it. This man, Neville, I have long known, to the very innermost corners of his dark mind. He won two hundred pounds of me at Ascot, last year, with such barefaced cheatery, that he himself did not expect me to pay the money--"