 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 this is 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 upon 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 see as clear through thee and thy concernments, as thou
call'st 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 for
other
