“Hang it!” said he, in conference with himself, as he tied on a neck-cloth at the glass, “if the fellow had but taken the five hundred pounds, there’d have been an end of it; and one could have wiped one’s hands of him. What right had the beggarly charity-boy to refuse a reward, as if he were a gentleman, I should like to know? I wonder what Kit Townley and Walmsley were about—the cowardly ninnies—to let an upstart like that pull me out of the hole. I’d almost as lief have been drowned.” And away went a spoiled cravat across the room in his temper; and he rummaged for a fresh one, to the detriment of linen, as he went on— “There’s one thing, I must either bring down my pride or give up the girl, and be d—— d to it! That old Ashton, with his ‘Just so!’ like a cuckoo, would certainly shut the door in my face if I neglected to make a set speech, and thank his precious _protege_, who knocks you down with one hand and picks you up with the other. Well, I don’t feel inclined to surrender the finest girl in Lancashire, and with such a fortune as she’ll have, so I’m in for it. I must make a virtue of necessity. Egad! I’ll write to this Mr. Clegg. No, I won’t. It would be a feather in his cap to have a thanksgiving letter of mine to exhibit.” Having at length determined his course, Mr. Laurence betook himself to Mosley Street, made his bow duly and gracefully to Mrs. Ashton and the young lady, keeping the hand of the latter as long within his own as etiquette would permit, and sending the warm blood mantling to her cheek, with a supplicating glance of devotion as potent as words. Then, with some little prolixity, he professed his desire to “thank his noble preserver” for the life he had saved; and at his request Mr. Clegg (whom he might just as well have thanked in the warehouse without ceremony) was sent for. Coming into the parlour all unwittingly as he did, to find Laurence Aspinall, handsome as ever, and more interesting from illness, standing under the lacquered-serpent chandelier in close proximity to Augusta, sparkling with animation, and blushing like the rose he had just offered her with a pretty simile, his emotions so overmastered him that the polished gentleman had him at a disadvantage, and shone in comparison. Both Augusta and her mother noted the contrast between the elegant manner, suave tones, and rounded periods of Laurence Aspinall’s thanks and the curt disclaimer of Jabez, though their deductions were different. Augusta was in raptures with the rose-giver. “Ah! my dear, all is not gold that glitters. There is more sterling metal in your father’s salesman, mark my words, than in the tinselled lieutenant,” was the summing-up of the elder, as she replaced cake and wine in side-board and cellaret. She was clearly no friend to Aspinall now that he had recovered sense and sight.