"Arrangement with my father? What for? He has less power than you have: the will is expressly constructed so as to make arrangement impossible, and shut him out entirely," cried Horace, with a certain suppressed exultation of enmity. "Besides, he hates me, and I'd much rather arrange with you. Look here, Pouncet--I want to get married. Give me a thousand a-year, and I'll give you my best services, and my word of honour to pay you a reasonable sum, by way of acknowledgment, when I come into my property. Will you? There is no use lingering over it--say Yes or No." "A thousand a-year!" cried Mr. Pouncet, in dismay. "Less would be useless," said Horace, in his high-flying arrogance. "Besides, I could earn half as much anywhere, without asking any favour from you." Poor Mr. Pouncet took his hand out of his pocket, and grinned at the young man with a helpless spite and disdain. Words were so incapable of expressing all the mingled mockery and mortification with which he heard that last speech, that the unfortunate lawyer would have made derisive faces at him had he dared. As it was, he turned away to his desk, and growled under his breath, "Catch me giving you fifty if you hadn't known," by way of relieving his feelings. Stifled as it was, the expression did him good. He turned round again with only some spasmodic remains of that grin agitating the corners of his mouth. "And you're going to marry? Any money--eh?" he said. "I don't think it," said Horace--"but I should like to know your decision at once, for I have some arrangements to make." "A thousand a-year for the whole term of your father's life? Why, I suppose he is no older than I am?--he may live for twenty years," said the unhappy lawyer, rubbing up the scanty hair upon his head. "He may," said Horace, briefly; but, as he spoke, a terrible throb convulsed, in spite of himself, the young man's heart, upon which those deadly packets seemed to press like an intolerable weight. "He may! And you ask me, a man in my senses, to undertake paying you an income of a thousand a-year for, perhaps, twenty years!" "I ask you only to consider the matter, and what I might be able to do for you at the end of my probation," said Horace, loftily--"not to say my services for the present time. Don't do anything against your will. A lawsuit promoted by young Musgrave--by that time most likely my brother-in-law--would, I have no doubt, be quite as profitable to _me_." The lawyer gave a gasp of rage and derision beyond words. "You could conduct it, you suppose?" he cried aloud--"_you_!"--which was very imprudent, but a burst of nature. Then he cooled himself down, with a little shiver of passion: he dared not irritate this remorseless, immovable boy. "I could, easily, with all these facts in my possession," said Horace, with a careless gesture; and Mr. Pouncet saw his whole substance, his business, and, worst of all, his reputation, falling like so many card-houses at the touch of that unpitying hand.