“By this light, Anthony, thou art mad,” answered Lambourne, “and hast described rather the gentleman-usher to a puritan’s wife, than the follower of an ambitious courtier!  Yes, such a thing as thou wouldst make of me should wear a book at his girdle instead of a poniard, and might just be suspected of manhood enough to squire a proud dame-citizen to the lecture at Saint Antonlin’s, and quarrel in her cause with any flat-capped threadmaker that would take the wall of her.  He must ruffle it in another sort that would walk to court in a nobleman’s train.”

“Oh, content you, sir,” replied Foster, “there is a change since you knew the English world; and there are those who can hold their way through the boldest courses, and the most secret, and yet never a swaggering word, or an oath, or a profane word in their conversation.”

“That is to say,” replied Lambourne, “they are in a trading copartnery, to do the devil’s business without mentioning his name in the firm?  Well, I will do my best to counterfeit, rather than lose ground in this new world, since thou sayest it is grown so precise.  But, Anthony, what is the name of this nobleman, in whose service I am to turn hypocrite?”

“Aha!  Master Michael, are you there with your bears?” said Foster, with a grim smile; “and is this the knowledge you pretend of my concernments?  How know you now there is such a person in RERUM Natura, and that I have not been putting a jape upon you all this time?”

“Thou put a jape on me, thou sodden-brained gull?” answered Lambourne, nothing daunted.  “Why, dark and muddy as thou think’st thyself, I would engage in a day’s space to sec as clear through thee and thy concernments, as thou callest them, as through the filthy horn of an old stable lantern.”

At this moment their conversation was interrupted by a scream from the next apartment.

“By the holy Cross of Abingdon,” exclaimed Anthony Foster, forgetting his Protestantism in his alarm, “I am a ruined man!”

So saying, he rushed into the apartment whence the scream issued, followed by Michael Lambourne.  But to account for the sounds which interrupted their conversation, it is necessary to recede a little way in our narrative.

It has been already observed, that when Lambourne accompanied Foster into the library, they left Tressilian alone in the ancient parlour.  His dark eye followed them forth of the apartment with a glance of contempt, a part of which his mind instantly transferred to himself, for having stooped to be even for a moment their familiar companion.  “These are the associates, Amy”—­it was thus he communed with himself—­“to which thy cruel levity—­thine unthinking and most unmerited falsehood, has condemned him of whom his friends once hoped far other things, and who now scorns himself, as he will be scorned by others, for the baseness he stoops to for the love of thee!  But I will not leave the pursuit of thee, once the object of my purest and most devoted affection, though to me thou canst henceforth be nothing but a thing to weep over.  I will save thee from thy betrayer, and from thyself; I will restore thee to thy parent—­to thy God.  I cannot bid the bright star again sparkle in the sphere it has shot from, but—­”