"But I put a hitch in his gallop there, anyhow. By Jove, I was a great fool not to make love to the old woman, instead of her daughter." "Meaning Lady Naseby?" said Sharpus, with surprise. "So Burke and Debrett name her. She is just at that age--twice her daughter's--when the soft sex become remarkably soft indeed, and apt to make fools of themselves." "She would indeed have been one had she listened to you." "Thanks, old tape-and-parchment; I did not come here for a character, but to show you the state of my cash-book." Again the lawyer groaned, and Guilfoyle laughed louder than ever. Delight to have a lawyer under his heel rendered him merciless; but even a worm will turn, so Sharpus said sternly, "How have you lived since the last remittance--extortion?" "Call it as you will," replied the other, putting his glass in his eye, and smilingly switching his leg with his cane; "I have lived as most men do who live by their wits, and the follies, or it may be the _crimes_--O, you wince!--of others; meeting debts and emergencies as they come, content with the peace or action of the present, and never regretting the past, or fearing the future! With the help of an ace, king, and queen, when my betting-book or a stroke of billiards failed me, and with your great kindness, my dear old Sharpus, I have, till now, always kept my funds far above zero." "Your life is a great sham--a very labyrinth of deceit!" exclaimed the lawyer, furiously. "And yours, friend Sharpus?" "Is spent in slaving for my family, and endeavouring to atone for, or to buy the concealment of, one great error--the error that made you--ay, men such as you--my master!" Guilfoyle laughed heartily, and said, "I require 600_l_. instantly!" "Not a penny--not another penny!" "We shall see. Sharpus, though a bad lot, I know that you are not the utter rogue that most of your profession are--" "Leave my office, scoundrel, or I shall kill you!" said Sharpus, in a low voice of concentrated passion, as he became deadly pale, and a dangerous white gleam came into his stealthy restless eyes, which seemed to search in vain for a weapon. "If I leave your office it will be for the purpose of laying before the nearest police-magistrate a certain document you may remember to have written; and I am so loth to kill the goose that lays my golden eggs," continued the other, in his quiet mocking tone. "But remember, Mr. Sharpus," he added, in a lofty and bullying manner, as he grasped the shoulder of the listener, "that the forgery of a document is not deemed an error in legal practice here, as in Spain or Scotland, but a _crime_ meriting penal servitude; and shall I tell you what that means--you, who have now wealth, ease, position, a handsome wife, and several children? You will be torn from all these for ever, as a felon!"