“Ha! and so you hide the hoard up there, aunt, eh? along with the preserves in a honey-pot, do you?”

“We’ll see—­we’ll see, some o’ these long days; not that the money’s to be yours, Nep—­you’re rich enough, and don’t want it; there’s your poor sister Scott with her fourteen children, and Aunt Bridget must give her a lift in life:  she was a good niece to me, Simon, and never left my side before she married:  maybe she’ll have cause to bless the dead.”

Jennings hardly spoke a word more; but drained his glass in silence, got up a sudden stomach-ache, and wished his aunt good-night.

CHAPTER XXIII.

SCHEMES.

WE must follow Simon Jennings to his room.  He felt keenly disappointed.  Money was the idol of his heart, as it is of many million others.  He had robbed, lied, extorted, tyrannized; he had earned scorn, ill-report, and hatred; nay, he had even diligently gone to work, and lost his own self-love and self-respect in the service of his darling idol.  He was at once, for lucre’s sake, the mean, cringing fawner, and the pitiless, iron despot; to the rich he could play supple parasite, while the poor man only knew him as an unrelenting persecutor; with the good, and they were chiefly of the fairer, softer sex, he walked in meekness, the spiritual hypocrite; the while, it was his boast to over-reach the worst in low duplicity and crooked dealing.  All this he was for gold.  When the eye of the world was on him, and intuition warned him of the times, he was ever the serene, the correct, with a smooth tongue and an oily smile; but in the privacy of some poor hovel, where his debtor sued for indulgence, or some victim of his passions (he had more depravities than one) threw her wretched self upon his pity, then could Simon Jennings lash sternness into rage, and heat his brazen heart with the embers of inveterate malice.  It was as if the serpent, that voluble, insinuating reptile, which had power to fascinate poor Eve, turned to rend her when she had fallen, erect, with flashing eyes, and bristling crest, with venomed fangs, and hissing.  Behold, snake-worshippers of Mexico, the prototype of your grim idol, in Mammon’s model slave and specimen disciple!

Such a man was Simon Jennings, a soul given up to gold—­exclusively to gold; for although, as we have hinted, and as hereafter may appear, he could sell himself at times to other sins, still these were but as stars in his evil firmament, while covetousness ruled it like the sun; or, if the beauteous stars and blessed sun be an image too hallowed for his wickedness, we may find a fitter in some stagnant pool, where the pestilential vapour over all is Mammonism, and the dull, fat weeds that rot beneath, are pride, craftiness, and lechery.  In fact, to speak of passions in a heart such as his, were a palpable misnomer; all was reduced to calculation; his rage was fostered to intimidate, and where the wretch seemed kinder, his kindnesses were aimed at power, as an object, rather than at pleasure—­the power to obtain more gold.