“And how should I know, sir?” replied the other, rudely. “I am very little acquainted with the property itself; I know still less about the kind of dealings you speak of. It does not concern me in the least what you do, or how you do it. I believe I may have given you bonds for something very like double the amount of all you ever advanced to me. I hear of nothing from my father but the immense resources of this, and the great capabilities of that; but as these same eventualities are not destined to better _my_ condition, I have not troubled my head to remember anything about them. You have a claim of about twenty thousand against me.” “Thirty-two thousand four hundred and seventy-eight pounds,” said the Jew, reading from a small note-book which he had just taken from his waistcoat pocket. “That is some ten thousand more than ever I heard of,” said Martin, with an hysterical sort of laugh. “Egad, Merl, the fellows were right that would not have you in the 'Cercle.' You 'd have 'cleared every man of them out,'--as well let a ferret into a rabbit warren.” “I was n't aware,--I had not heard that I was put up--” “To be sure you were; in all form proposed, seconded, and duly blackballed. I own to you, I thought it very hard, very illiberal. There are plenty of fellows there that have no right to be particular; and so Jack Massingbred as much as told them. The fact is, Merl, you ought to have waited awhile, and by the time that Harlowe and Spencer Cavendish and a few more such were as deep in your books as I am, you 'd have had a walk over. Willoughby says the same. It might have cost you something smart, but you 'd have made it pay in the end,--eh, Merl?” To this speech, uttered in a strain of jocular impertinence, Merl made no reply. He had just torn one of his gloves in pieces in the effort to draw it on, and he was busily exerting himself to get rid of the fragments. “Lady Dorothea had given me a card for you for Saturday,” resumed the Captain; “but as you 're going away--Besides, after this defeat at the Club, you could n't well come amongst all these people; so there's nothing for it but patience, Merl, patience--” “A lesson that may be found profitable to others, perhaps,” said the Jew, with one of his furtive looks at the Captain, who quailed under it at once. “I was going to give you a piece of advice, Merl,” said he, in a tone the very opposite to his late bantering one. “It was, that you should just take a run over to Ireland yourself, and see the property.” “I mean to do so, Captain Martin,” said the other, calmly. “I can't offer you letters, for they would defeat what you desire to accomplish; besides, there is no member of the family there at present but a young lady-cousin of mine.” “Just the kind of introduction I 'd like,” said the Jew, with all the zest of a man glad to say what he knew would be deemed an impertinence. Martin grew crimson with suppressed anger, but never spoke a word.