"I'm sorry, lass!" he said simply, sniffing. "The lad's a fool. It
isn't as if I've got to go hawking seven per cent. debentures to get
rid of 'em--and in a concern like that, too! They'd never ha' been
seven per cent if it hadna been for me. But it was you as I was
thinking of when I offered 'em to Louis. I thought I should be doing
ye a good turn."
The old man smiled amid his loud sniffs. He was too old to have
retained any save an artistic interest in women. But an artistic
interest in them he certainly had; and at an earlier period he had
acquainted himself with life, as his eye showed. Rachel blushed a
third time that morning, and more deeply than before. He was seriously
nattering her now. Endearing qualities that had expired in him long
ago seemed to be resuscitated and to animate his ruined features.
Rachel dimly understood how it was that some woman had once married
him and borne him a lot of children, and how it was that he had been
so intimate and valued a friend of the revered husband of such a woman
as Mrs. Maldon. She was, in the Five Towns phrase, "flustered." She
almost believed what Thomas Batchgrew had said. She did believe it.
She had misjudged him on the Thursday night when he spread the lure of
the seven per cent.
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