“He had nothing for it but to leave us when we attacked him altogether,” said Mr. Tyrrwhit.  “If you had left it to me he would have told us what he intended to do.  You, Mr. Hart, had not so much cause to be angry, as you had received a considerable sum for interest.”  Then Mr. Hart turned upon Mr. Tyrrwhit, and abused him all the way back to their inn.  But it was pleasant to see how these commercial gentlemen, all engaged in the natural course of trade, expressed their violent indignation, not so much as to their personal losses, but at the commercial dishonesty generally of which the Scarboroughs, father and son, had been and were about to be guilty.

Mountjoy, when he reached the house of which he was now the only occupant besides the servants, stood for an hour in the dining-room with his back toward the fire, thinking of his position.  He had many things of which to think.  In the first place, there were these pseudo-creditors who had just attacked him in his own park with much acrimony.  He endeavored to comfort himself by telling himself that they were certainly pseudo-creditors, to whom he did not in fact owe a penny.  Mr. Barry could deal with them.

But then his conscience reminded him that they had, in truth, been cheated,—­cheated by his father for his benefit.  For every pound which they had received they would have claimed three or four.  They would no doubt have cheated him.  But how was he now to measure the extent of his father’s fraud against that of his creditors?  And though it would have been right in him to resist the villany of these Jews, he felt that it was not fit that he should escape from their fangs altogether by his father’s deceit.  He had not become so dead to honor but that noblesse oblige did still live within his bosom.  And yet there was nothing that he could do to absolve his bosom.  The income of the estate was nearly clear, the money brought in by the late sales having all but sufficed to give these gentlemen that which his father had chosen to pay them.  But was he sure of that income?  He had just now asserted boldly that he was the legitimate heir to the property; but did he know that he was so?  Could he believe his father?  Had not Mr. Grey asserted that he would not accept this later evidence?  Was he not sure that Augustus intended to proceed against him? and was he not aware that nothing could be called his own till that lawsuit should have been decided?  If that should be given against him, then these harpies would have been treated only too well; then there would be no question, at any rate by him, as to what noblesse oblige might require of him.  He could take no immediate step in regard to them, and therefore, for the moment, drove that trouble from his mind.