The Freemason's Daughter: A Novel — page 261: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

254 THE FREEMASONS DAUGHTER. face nearly drove him to madness; “go, leave my house—I defy, spit at, and curse you.” ‘¢ As you please,” said Small. The next moment the door of the inner office was closed upon him. No sooner was Grindem alone than he gave way to the whirlwind of passion which rage and despair had concentrated in his heart. He could have gnawed his very flesh with anger to think that the tool—the human thing he had so long trampled on and despised—should turn against him, hold his destiny in his hands, menace and insult him—him, the wealthy Gilbert Grindem—the Croesus of Manchester, the dictator of the exchange, the leviathan of the markets. A thousand wild and impracticable schemes for dis- posing of Small, or obtaining the evidence, passed through his brain, only to be rejected. Buitterly did he regret the absence of his nephew, whom his pride had _ banished. All might have been repaired had he but been in England—his honour preserved and his partner defied—by Henry’s marriage with Amy Lawrence ; now it was impossible. ‘Too late—too late!’’ he murmured, as he sank despondingly into a chair. “I am in the toils, nothing can extricate me—fool! the meshes of the net were woven by my own hands.” For nearly an hour the crushed and humbled mer- chant sat brooding over his position, which, view it which way he would, seemed desperate enough. Of course he was not deceived by his partner’s discourse ecomnuicloooks (SO