"Pray do not say so, Mr. Gammon, I fully appreciate your motives. I am devoured with anxiety for an intimation of the nature of the terms which you were about, so kindly, to specify."
"_Specify_, Mr. Aubrey, is perhaps rather too strong a term--but to proceed. Supposing the preliminary matter which I have alluded to satisfactorily arranged, I am disposed to say, that if you could find security for the payment of the sum of ten thousand pounds within a year, or a year and a half"--[Mr. Aubrey's teeth almost chattered at the mention of it]--"I--I--that is, _my_ impression is--but--I repeat--it is only _mine_"--added Gammon, earnestly--"that the rest should be left to your own honor, giving at the same time a personal undertaking to pay at a future--a very distant day--in the manner most convenient to yourself--the sum of ten thousand pounds more--making in all only one-third of the sum due from you; and receiving an absolute release from Mr. Titmouse in respect of the remaining two-thirds, namely, forty thousand pounds."
Mr. Aubrey listened to all this with his feelings and faculties strung to the utmost pitch of intensity; and when Gammon had ceased, experienced a transient sense, as if the fearful mountain which had pressed so long on his heart were moving.
"Have I made myself intelligible, Mr. Aubrey?" inquired Gammon, kindly, but very gravely.
"Perfectly--but I feel so oppressed and overwhelmed with the magnitude of the topics we are discussing, that I scarcely at present appreciate the position in which you would place me. I must throw myself, Mr. Gammon, entirely upon your indulgence!"
"I can imagine your feelings, sir," said he, as, thrusting into a heap the papers lying on the table, he threw them into a drawer, and then took a sheet of paper and a pencil; and while he made a few memoranda of the arrangement which he had been mentioning, he continued--"You see--the grand result of what I have been hastily sketching off is--to give you ample time to pay the amount which I have named, and to relieve you, at once, _absolutely_ from no less a sum than FORTY THOUSAND POUNDS," said he, with emphasis and deliberation, "for which--and with interest--you will otherwise remain liable to the day of your death;--there can be no escape," he continued with pointed significance of manner--"except, perhaps, into banishment, which, with your feelings, would be worse than death--for it would--of course--be a _dishonorable_ exile--to avoid just liabilities;--and those who bear your name would, in such an"----