ABSTRACT
Mr. Bargrave now appeared, and excused himself as well as he could for not having attended Marchmont’s first summons. He had been out of town on indispensable business, and wished to hear from Mr. Eversley before he took any material steps. He then talked over the affairs, but not very sanguinely. As to what Mr. Eversley had said in his letter, to what did it amount? For, in short, what could be done unless to give bail for the whole debt? Such was the tenor of Mr. Bargrave’s conversation: and Marchmont acknowledged, that, as far as related to Eversley, his way of seeing the thing accorded with his own opinion; for he would not for the world have engaged Eversley to answer for so large a sum, which he saw no prospect of ever being able to pay himself. So scrupulous was he of intruding too much on his generous friendship, that he had made no use of the order on his banker which Eversley had last sent him; though such had been the plunder he had suffered, and such the high prices at which every thing was retailed in the prison,163 that his purse was very much reduced – while that which Lucy managed for her mother was, from having paid half a year’s rent of their cottage, and the expences of their removal, greatly lowered also. Nothing was due to Althea of the dividend on her aunt’s legacy till October; and Marchmont, when Bargrave had left him, after giving him so remote a prospect of being out of imprisonment, began to consider how he was to live in it.
