"Down with such dishonesty," says the creditor in triumph, and reviles his sinking enemy.

"You fool, why do you catch at a straw ?" calm good sense says to the man that is drowning.

"You villain, why do you shrink from plunging into the irretrievable Gazette ?" says prosperity to the poor devil battling in that black gulf.

Who has not remarked the readiness with which the closest of friends and honestest of men suspect and accuse each other of cheating when they fall out on money matters?
Everybody does it.
Everybody is right, I suppose, and the world is a rogue.
Then Osborne had the intolerable sense of former benefits to goad and irritate him: these are always a cause of hostility aggravated.
Finally, he had to break off the match between Sedley's daughter and his son; and as it had gone very far indeed, and as the poor girl's happiness and perhaps character were compromised, it was necessary to show the strongest reasons for the rupture, and for John Osborne to prove John Sedley to be a very bad character indeed.
At the meetings of creditors, then, he comported himself with a savageness and scorn towards Sedley, which almost succeeded in breaking the heart of that ruined bankrupt man.

On George's intercourse with Amelia he put an instant veto--menacing the youth with maledictions if he broke his commands, and vilipending the poor innocent girl as the basest and most artful of vixens.