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304 Tom Tozer, Mr. Sowerby knew that seven devils were being evoked, each worse than the first devil. Mr. Sowerby did feel something like sincere regard, or rather love, for that poor parson whom he had inveigled into mischief, and would fain save him, if it were possible, from the Tozer fang. Mr. Forrest, of the Barchester Bank, would probably take up that last five hundred pound bill on behalf of Mr. Robarts, only it would be needful that he, Sowerby, should run down and see that this was properly done. As to the other bill—the former and lesser one—as to that, Mr. Tozer would probably be quiet for a while.

Such had been Sowerby's programme for these two days; but now—what farther possibility was there now that he should care for Robarts, or any other human being—he that was to be swept at once into the dung-heap?

In this frame of mind he walked up South Audley Street, and crossed one side of Grosvenor Square, and went almost mechanically into Green Street. At the farther end of Green Street, near to Park Lane, lived Mr. and Mrs. Harold Smith.



Miss Dunstable met her friends the Greshams—young Frank Gresham and his wife—at Gatherum Castle, she immediately asked after one Dr. Thorne, who was Mrs. Gresham's uncle. Dr. Thorne was an old bachelor, in whom both as a man and a doctor Miss Dunstable was inclined to place much confidence. Not that she had ever intrusted the cure of her bodily ailments to Dr. Thorne—for she kept a doctor of her own. Dr. Easyman, for this purpose—and it may moreover be said that she rarely had bodily ailments requiring the care of any doctor. But she always spoke of Dr. Thorne among her friends as a man of wonderful erudition and judgment, and had once or twice asked and acted on his advice in matters of much moment. Dr. Thorne was not a man accustomed to the London world; he kept no house there, and seldom even visited the metropolis; but Miss Dunstable had known him at Greshamsbury, where he lived, and there had for some months past grown up a considerable intimacy between