dark, with oval face and glorious black eyes and eyebrows, a slight foreign accent, and ingratiating manners. He called this beauty his sister, and instructed her to win Walter Clifford in that character, and to marry him. As she was twenty-two, and Master Clifford nineteen, he had no chance with her, and they were to be married this very day at the Register Office.
Manoeuvring Monckton then inclined to let Bartley's fraud go on and ripen, but eventually expose it for the benefit of young Walter and his wife, who adored this Monckton, because, when a beautiful woman loves an ugly blackguard, she never does it by halves.
But he had no sooner thought out this conclusion than there came an obstacle. Lucy Muller's heart failed her at the last moment, and she came into the office with a rush to tell her master so. She uttered a cry of joy at sight of him, and came at him panting and full of love. "Oh, Leonard, I am so glad you are alone! Leonard, dear Leonard, pray do not insist on my marrying that young man. Now it comes to the time, my heart fails me." The tears stood in her glorious eyes, and an honest man would have pitied her, and even respected her a little for her compunction, though somewhat tardy.
But her master just fixed his eyes coldly on his slave, and said, brutally, "Never mind your heart; think of your interest."
The weak woman allowed herself to be diverted into this topic. "Why, he is no such great catch, I am sure."
"I tell you he is, more than ever: I have just discovered another £20,000 he is heir to, and not got to wait for that any longer than I choose."
Lucy stamped her foot. "I don't care for his money. Till he came with his money you loved me."
"I love you as much as ever," said Monckton, coldly.
Lucy began to sob. "No, you don't, or you wouldn't give me up to that young fool."
The villain made a cynical reply, that not every Newgate thief could have matched. "You fool," said he, "can't you marry him, and go on loving me? you won't be the first. It is done every day, to the satisfaction of all parties."
"And to their unutterable shame," said a clear, stern voice at their back. Walter Clifford, coming rapidly in, had heard but little, but heard enough; and there he stood, grim and pale, a boy no longer. These two skunks had made a man of him in one moment. They recoiled in dismay, and the woman hid her face.
He turned upon the man first, you may be sure. "So you have palmed this lady off on me as your sister, and trapped me, and would have destroyed me." His lip quivered; for they had passed the iron through his heart. But he manned himself, and carried it off like a soldier's son:
"But if I was fool enough to leave my father, I am not fool enough to present to the world your cast-off mistress as my wife." (Lucy hid her face in her hands.) "Here, Miss Lucy Monckton—or whatever your name may be—here is the marriage license. Take that and my contempt, and do what you like with them."
With these words he dashed into Bartley's private room, and there broke down. It was a bitter cup, the first in his young life.
The baffled schemers drank wormwood too; but they bore it differently. The woman cried, and took her punishment meekly; the man raged and threatened vengeance.
"No, no," said Lucy; "it serves us right. I wish I had never seen the fellow: then you would have kept your word, and married me."
"I will marry you now, if you can obey me."
"Obey you, Leonard? You have been my ruin; but only marry me, and I will be your slave in everything—your willing, devoted, happy slave."
"That is a bargain," said Monckton, coolly. "I'll be even with him; I will marry you in his name and in his place."
This puzzled Lucy.
"Why in his name?" said she.
He did not answer.
"Well, never mind the name," said she, "so that it is the right man—and that is you."
Then Monckton's fertile brain, teeming with villainies, fell to hatching a new plot more felonious than the last. He would rob the safe, and get Clifford convicted for the theft; convicted as Bolton, Clifford would never tell his real name, and Lucy should enter the Cliffords' house with a certificate of his death and a certificate of his marriage, both obtained by substitution, and so collar his share of the £20,000, and off with the real husband to fresh pastures.
Lucy looked puzzled. Hers was not a brain to disentangle such a monstrous web.
Monckton reflected a moment. "What is the first thing? Let me see. Humph!
I think the first thing is to get married."
"Yes," said Lucy, with an eagerness that contrasted strangely with his cynical composure, "that is the first thing, and the most understandable." And she went dancing off with him as gay as a lark, and leaning on him at an angle of forty-five; whilst he went erect and cold, like a stone figure marching.
Walter Clifford came out in time to see them pass the great window. He watched them down the street, and cursed them—not loud but deep.
"Mooning, as usual," said a hostile voice behind him. He turned round, and there was Mr. Bartley seated at his own table. Young Clifford walked smartly to the other side of the table, determined this should be his last day in that shop.
"There are the payments," said he.
Bartley inspected them.
"About one in five," said he, dryly.
"Thereabouts," was the reply. (Consummate indifference.)
"You can't have pressed them much."
"Well, I am not good at dunning."
"What are you good at?"
"Should be puzzled to say."
"You are not fit for trade."
"That is the highest compliment was ever paid me."
"Oh, you are impertinent as well as incompetent, are you? Then take a week's warning, Mr. Bolton."
"Five minutes would suit me better, Mr. Bartley."
"Oh! indeed! Say one hour."
"All right, sir; just time for a city clerk's luncheon—glass of bitter, sandwich, peep at Punch, cigarette, and a chat with the bar-maid."
Mr. Walter Clifford was a gentleman, but we must do him the justice to say that in this interview with his employer he was a very impertinent one, not only in words, but in the delivery thereof. Bartley, however, thought this impertinence was put on, and that he had grave reasons for being in a hurry. He took down the numbers of the notes Clifford had given him, and looked very grave and suspicious all the time.
Then he locked up the notes in the safe, and just then Hope opened the door of the little office and looked in.
"At last," said Bartley.
"Well, sir," said Hope, "I have only been half an hour, and I have changed my clothes and stood witness to a marriage. She
