That gigantic machine of torture which he had been building and dove-tailing, with patient villany, at Lord Verney's word fell with a crash, like an enchanted castle at its appointed spell. Well was it for Lord Verney that the instinct of honour was strong in him, and that he would not suffer his vulgar tempter to beguile him into one indefensible concealment. Had he fallen, that tempter would have been his tyrant. He would have held everything in trust for Mr. Jos. Larkin. The effigy of Lord Verney would, indeed, have stood, on state occasions, robed and coronetted, with his order, driven down to the House, and sat there among hereditary senators; all around him, would have been brilliant and luxurious, and the tall bald head of the Christian attorney would have bowed down before the out-going and the in-coming of the phantom. But the real peer would have sat cold and dark enough, in Jos. Larkin's dungeon--his robe on the wall, a shirt of Nessus--his coronet on a nail, a Neapolitan "cap of silence"--quite tame under the rat-like eye of a terror from which he never could escape. There was a silence here for some time. Lord Verney leaned back with closed eyes, exhausted. Mr. Larkin looked down on the carpet smiling faintly, and with the tip of one finger scratching his bald head gently. The attorney spoke--"Might I suggest, for the safety of your lordship's unhappy brother, that the matter should be kept strictly quiet--just for a day or two, until I shall have made arrangements for his--may I term it--escape." "Certainly," said Lord Verney, looking away a little. "Yes--_that_ must, of course, be arranged; and--and this marriage--I shall leave that decision entirely in the hands of the young lady." Lord Verney was a little agitated. "And I think, Mr. Larkin, I have said everything at present. Good evening." As Mr. Larkin traversed the hall of Malory, scratching the top of his bald head with one finger, in profound and black rumination, I am afraid his thoughts and feelings amounted to a great deal of cursing and swearing. "Sweet evening," he observed suddenly to the surprised servant who opened the door for him. He was now standing at the threshold, with his hands expanded as if he expected rain, and smiling villianously upward toward the stars. "Sweet evening," he repeated, and then biting his lip and looking down for a while on the gravel, he descended and walked round the corner to the Steward's House. CHAPTER XXI. MR. LARKIN'S TWO MOVES. THE hatch of the Steward's House stood open, and Mr. Larkin entered. There was a girl's voice crying in the room next the hall, and he opened the door. The little girl was sobbing with her apron to her eyes, and hearing the noise she lowered it and looked at the door, when the lank form of the bald attorney and his sinister face peering in met her eyes, and arrested her lamentation with a new emotion.