Money he loved with an adoration that excluded every other passion; that blank check, that limitless carte blanche, that vast exchequer from which to draw!--it was a sore temptation.
He thought wistfully of the welsher's peremptory forbiddance of all compromise--of the welsher's inexorable command to "wring the fine-feathered bird," lose whatever might be lost by it.
Cecil, ere the Hebrew could speak, leaned forward, took the check and tore it in two.
"God bless you, Rock," he said, so low that it only reached the Seraph's ear, "but you must not do that." "Beauty, you are mad!" cried the Marquis passionately.

"If this villainous thing be a forgery, you are its victim as much as I--tenfold more than I.If this Jew chooses to sell the paper to me, naming his own compensation, whose affair is it except his and mine?
They have been losers, we indemnify them.

It rests with us to find out the criminal.

M.
Baroni, there are a hundred more checks in that book; name your price, and you shall have it; or, if you prefer my father's, I will send to him for it.

His Grace will sign one without a question of its errand, if I ask him.