"Shall I," thought Gammon, "wait till I am challenged on the subject, and then fire my shot, and bring his Lordship down from the tight-rope? Then, however, I cannot but appear to have known the thing from the very beginning; and who knows what liabilities, civil or criminal--of fraud or conspiracy--may be attached to what I have done! Shall I wait for a convenient, though early opportunity, and rush, with dismay and confusion, into the earl's presence, as with a discovery only just made? By Heaven! but the thing wears already a very ugly appearance. If it come out, what an uproar will be in the world! The lightning will fall on my head first, unless I take care. The discovery will doubtless kill Lord Dreddlington; and as for his daughter, it may overturn the little reason she has!" Passing from this subject, Gammon surveyed his other relations with the earl, which were becoming daily more involved and critical. He had seduced his Lordship into various mercantile speculations, such as had already placed him in a very questionable point of view, as taking deliberate, systematic advantage of the raging mania for bubble companies. In fact, Gammon had, by his skilful but not very scrupulous manœuvring, already put into Lord Dreddlington's pocket some forty thousand pounds, and at the same time involved his Lordship in liabilities which he never dreamed of, and even Gammon himself had not contemplated. Then he warmed with his apparent proximity to Parliament, (to that part of Titmouse's bargain Gammon resolved to hold him to the very letter,) which he was sure of entering on the very next election. By that time he would have realized a sum, through his connection with the various companies, which, even independently of the income to be derived thereafter from the Yatton property, would render him so far independent as to warrant him in dissolving partnership with Messrs. Quirk and Snap, and quitting at least the _practice_ of the profession.