"_Every_ thing, my lord. Pardon me--your lordship mentioned that, in point of fact, you are no longer Lord Verney; that being so--technically, of course--measures must be taken--in short, a--a quiet _arrangement_ with your lordship's brother, to prevent any disturbance, and I undertake to effect it, my lord; the nature of which will be to prevent the return of the title to abeyance, and of the estates to the management of the trustees, whose claim for mesne _rates_ and the liquidation of the mortgage, I need not tell your lordship, would be ruinous to you." "Why, sir--Mr. Larkin--I can hardly believe, sir--you can't mean, or think it possible, sir, that I should lend myself to a deception, and--and sit in the House of Peers by a _fraud_, sir! I'd much rather _die_ in the debtor's prison, about it; and I consider myself dishonoured by having involuntarily heard such an--an idea." Poor, pompous, foolish Lord Verney stood up, so dignified and stern in the light of his honest horror, that Mr. Larkin, who despised him utterly, quailed before a phenomenon he could not understand. Nothing confounded our friend Larkin, as a religious man, so much as discovering, after he had a little unmasked, that his client would not follow, and left him, as once or twice had happened, alone with his dead villanous suggestion, to account for it how he could. "Oh dear!--_surely_, my lord, your lordship did not _imagine_," said Mr. Larkin, doing his best, "I was--I, in fact--I _supposed_ a _case_. I only went the length of saying that I think--and with _sorrow_ I think it--that your lordship's brother has in view an _adjustment_ of his claim, and meant to _extract_, I fear, a sum of _money_ when he disclosed himself, and conferred with your lordship. I meant, merely, of course, that as he thought this I would _let_ him think it, and allow him to disclose his plans, with a view, of course, to deal with that information--first, of _course_, with a view to your lordship's _honour_, and next your lordship's safety; but if your lordship did not see your way _clearly_ to it"---- "No, I don't see--I think it most objectionable--about it. I know all that concerns me; and I have written to two official persons--one, I may say, the Minister himself--apprizing them of the actual position of the title, and asking some information as to how I should proceed in order to divest myself of it and the estates." "Just what I should have expected from your lordship's exquisite sense of honour," said Mr. Larkin, with a deferential bow, and a countenance black as thunder.