he could only get the agency in time it would set him up—­he could borrow L200 the day after his appointment; and he must make a push and extend his practice.  It was ridiculous, that blackguard little Toole carrying off the best families in the neighbourhood, and standing in the way of a man like him; and Nutter, too—­why, Lord Castlemallard knew as well as he did, that Nutter was not fit to manage the property, and that he was—­and Nutter without a child or anyone, and he with seven! and he counted them over mentally with a groan.  ‘What was to become of them?’ Then Nutter would be down upon him, without mercy, for the rent; and Dangerfield, if, indeed, he cared to do it [curse it, he trusted nobody], could not control him; and Lord Castlemallard, the selfish profligate, was away in Paris, leaving his business in the hands of that bitter old botch, who’d go any length to be the ruin of him.

Then he turned over the chances of borrowing a hundred pounds from the general—­as he did fifty times every day and night, but always with the same result—­’No; curse him, he’s as weak as water—­petticoat government—­he’ll do nothing without his sister’s leave, and she hates me like poison;’ and then he thought—­’it would not be much to ask Lord Castlemallard—­there’s still time—­to give me a month or two for the rent, but if the old sneak thought I owed twopence, I might whistle for the agency, and besides, faith!—­I don’t think he’d interfere.’

Then the clock down stairs would strike ‘three,’ and he felt thankful, with a great sigh, that so much of the night was over, and yet dreaded the morning.

And then he would con over his chances again, and think which was most likely to give him a month or two.  Old Dyle—­’Bah! he’s a stone, he would not give me an hour.  Or Carny, curse him, unless Lucas would move him.  And, no, Lucas is a rogue, selfish beast:  he owes me his place; and I don’t think he’d stir his finger to snatch me from perdition.  Or Nutter—­Nutter, indeed!—­why that fiend has been waiting half the year round to put in his distress the first hour he can.’

And then Sturk writhed round on his back, as we may suppose might St. Anthony on his gridiron, and rolled his eye-balls up toward the dark bed; and uttered a dismal groan, and thought of the three inexorable fates, Carny, Nutter, and Dyle, who at that moment held among them the measure, and the thread, and the shears of his destiny:  and standing desperately in the dark at the verge of the abyss, he mentally hurled the three ugly spirits together into his bag, and flung them whirling through the mirk into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

TELLING HOW LILIAS WALSINGHAM FOUND TWO LADIES AWAITING HER ARRIVAL AT THE ELMS.

When Lilias Walsingham, being set down in the hall at the Elms, got out and threw back her hood, she saw two females sitting there, who rose, as she emerged, and bobbed a courtesy each.  The elder was a slight thin woman of fifty or upwards, dark of feature, but with large eyes, the relics of early beauty.  The other a youthful figure, an inch or two taller, slim and round, and showing only a pair of eyes, large and dark as the others, looking from under her red hood, earnestly and sadly as it seemed, upon Miss Walsingham.