Chapter 45 - Page 2

know our league and covenant. We
are to work together for our joint interest, and you are as knowing a
hand as I am. We shouldn't be together, if you were not. What's to
be done? We are hemmed into a corner. What shall we do?'

'Have you no scheme on foot that will bring in anything?'

Mr Lammle plunged into his whiskers for reflection, and came out
hopeless: 'No; as adventurers we are obliged to play rash games for
chances of high winnings, and there has been a run of luck against
us.'

She was resuming, 'Have you nothing--' when he stopped her.

'We, Sophronia. We, we, we.'

'Have we nothing to sell ?'

'Deuce a bit. I have given a Jew a bill of sale on this furniture, and
he could take it to-morrow, to-day, now. He would have taken it
before now, I believe, but for Fledgeby.'

'What has Fledgeby to do with him?'

'Knew him. Cautioned me against him before I got into his claws.
Couldn't persuade him then, in behalf of somebody else.'

'Do you mean that Fledgeby has at all softened him towards you?'

'Us, Sophronia. Us, us, us.'

'Towards us?'

'I mean that the Jew has not yet done what he might have done,
and that Fledgeby takes the credit of having got him to hold his
hand.'

'Do you believe Fledgeby?'

'Sophronia, I never believe anybody. I never have, my dear, since I
believed you. But it looks like it.'

Having given her this back-handed reminder of her mutinous
observations to the skeleton, Mr Lammle rose from table--perhaps,
the better to conceal a smile, and a white dint or two about his
nose--and took a turn on the carpet and came to the hearthrug.

'If we could have packed the brute off with Georgiana;--but
however; that's spilled milk.'

As Lammle, standing gathering up the skirts of his dressing-gown
with his back to the fire, said this, looking down at his wife, she
turned pale and looked down at the ground. With a sense of
disloyalty upon her, and perhaps with a sense of personal danger--
for she was afraid of him--even afraid of his hand and afraid of his
foot, though he had never done her violence--she hastened to put
herself right in his eyes.

'If we could borrow money, Alfred--'

'Beg money, borrow money, or steal money. It would be all one to
us, Sophronia,' her husband struck in.

'--Then, we could weather this?'

'No doubt. To offer another original and undeniable remark,
Sophronia, two and two make four.'

But, seeing that she was turning something in her mind, he
gathered up the skirts of his dressing-gown again, and, tucking
them under one arm, and collecting his ample whiskers in his other
hand, kept his eye upon her, silently.

'It