Anxiety the Second:  The Fraud of the Tontine; or, Is my Uncle dead?  This, on which all Morris’s hopes depended, was yet a question.  He had tried to bully Teena; he had tried to bribe her; and nothing came of it.  He had his moral conviction still; but you cannot blackmail a sharp lawyer on a moral conviction.  And besides, since his interview with Michael, the idea wore a less attractive countenance.  Was Michael the man to be blackmailed? and was Morris the man to do it?  Grave considerations.  ‘It’s not that I’m afraid of him,’ Morris so far condescended to reassure himself; ’but I must be very certain of my ground, and the deuce of it is, I see no way.  How unlike is life to novels!  I wouldn’t have even begun this business in a novel, but what I’d have met a dark, slouching fellow in the Oxford Road, who’d have become my accomplice, and known all about how to do it, and probably broken into Michael’s house at night and found nothing but a waxwork image; and then blackmailed or murdered me.  But here, in real life, I might walk the streets till I dropped dead, and none of the criminal classes would look near me.  Though, to be sure, there is always Pitman,’ he added thoughtfully.

Anxiety the Third:  The Cottage at Browndean; or, The Underpaid Accomplice.  For he had an accomplice, and that accomplice was blooming unseen in a damp cottage in Hampshire with empty pockets.  What could be done about that?  He really ought to have sent him something; if it was only a post-office order for five bob, enough to prove that he was kept in mind, enough to keep him in hope, beer, and tobacco.  ’But what would you have?’ thought Morris; and ruefully poured into his hand a half-crown, a florin, and eightpence in small change.  For a man in Morris’s position, at war with all society, and conducting, with the hand of inexperience, a widely ramified intrigue, the sum was already a derision.  John would have to be doing; no mistake of that.  ‘But then,’ asked the hell-like voice, ‘how long is John likely to stand it?’

Anxiety the Fourth:  The Leather Business; or, The Shutters at Last:  a Tale of the City.  On this head Morris had no news.  He had not yet dared to visit the family concern; yet he knew he must delay no longer, and if anything had been wanted to sharpen this conviction, Michael’s references of the night before rang ambiguously in his ear.  Well and good.  To visit the city might be indispensable; but what was he to do when he was there?  He had no right to sign in his own name; and, with all the will in the world, he seemed to lack the art of signing with his uncle’s.  Under these circumstances, Morris could do nothing to procrastinate the crash; and, when it came, when prying eyes began to be applied to every joint of his behaviour, two questions could not fail to be addressed, sooner or later, to a speechless and perspiring insolvent.  Where is Mr Joseph Finsbury? and how about your visit to the bank?  Questions, how easy to put!—­ye gods, how