"Wait one moment, Slyme," says Fabian, without looking up from the figures before him. A moment passes in utter silence. Then Fabian, still with his eyes upon the account, says, somewhat sharply: "Why, it is altogether wrong. It has been attended to with extreme carelessness. Did you, yourself, see to this matter of Younge's?" He waits, apparently for an answer but none comes. Lifting his eyes he fixes them scrutinizingly on the old man before him, and having fixed them, lets them rest there in displeased surprise. Slyme, beneath this steady gaze, grows visibly uneasy. His eyes shift uncomfortably from one object in the room to another; his limbs are unsteady; the hand resting on the table near him is shaking. His face betrays vacancy mixed with a cunning desire to hide from observation the heaviness and sluggishness that is overpowering him. "Speak," says Fabian, sternly and remorselessly; "you can frame an answer, I suppose." The old man mutters something that is almost unintelligible, so thick and husky are his tones. His eyes grow more restless;--mechanically, and as though unconscious of the act, he leans his body stupidly against the book-case near him. "You are drunk," says Fabian, with slow scorn--"leave the room." Having said this he turns again to his papers, as though from this moment contemptuously unaware of the other's presence. Slyme attempts an explanation: "You wrong me, sir," he says, in a thick uncertain voice--"I--I am ill--; my head is bad at times--I--" "That will do," says Fabian, such ineffable disgust in his whole manner as makes the miserable, besotted old wretch before him actually cower. "No more lies. I have spoken to you already twice this week--and--; do you know what hour it is?--twelve o'clock! you begin your day early." "I assure you, sir," begins Slyme again. But Fabian will not listen: "Go," he says, briefly, with a disdainful motion of the hand, and in a tone not to be disobeyed. Slyme moves towards the door in his usual slouching fashion, but, as he reaches it, pauses, and for one instant lifts his heavy eyes, and lets them rest upon the young man at the distant table. This one instant reveals his thoughts. In his glance there is fear, distrust, and, above and beyond all, a malignant and undying hatred--such a hatred as might project itself from the eyes of the traitor upon his victim. There is, too, upon Slyme's face a contortion of the muscles, that it would be sacrilege to call a smile, that is revengeful, and somehow suggests the possibility that this man, however impotent he may now appear, has, in some strange fashion, acquired a hidden and terrible power over the young man, who a moment since had treated him with such scorn and contumely.