“But,” resumed Darvil, helping himself to another slice of beef, “you are in the wrong box—planted in Queer Street, as we say in London; for if you care a d—n about my daughter’s respectability, you will never muzzle her father on suspicion of theft—and so there’s tit for tat, my old gentleman!”
“I shall deny that you are her father, Mr. Darvil; and I think you will find it hard to prove the fact in any town where I am a magistrate.”
“By goles, what a good prig you would have made! You are as sharp as a gimlet. Surely you were brought up at the Old Bailey!”
“Mr. Darvil, be ruled. You seem a man not deaf to reason, and I ask you whether, in any town in this country, a poor man in suspicious circumstances can do anything against a rich man whose character is established? Perhaps you are right in the main: I have nothing to do with that. But I tell you that you shall quit this house in half an hour—that you shall never enter it again but at your peril; and if you do—within ten minutes from that time you shall be in the town gaol. It is no longer a contest between you and your defenceless daughter; it is a contest between—”
“A tramper in fustian, and a gemman as drives a coach,” interrupted Darvil, laughing bitterly, yet heartily. “Good—good!”
The banker rose. “I think you have made a very clever definition,” said he. “Half an hour—you recollect—good evening.”
“Stay,” said Darvil; “you are the first man I have seen for many a year that I can take a fancy to. Sit down—sit down, I say, and talk a bit, and we shall come to terms soon, I dare say;—that’s right. Lord! how I should like to have you on the roadside instead of within these four gimcrack walls. Ha! ha! the argufying would be all in my favour then.”
The banker was not a brave man, and his colour changed slightly at the intimation of this obliging wish. Darvil eyed him grimly and chucklingly.
The rich man resumed: “That may or may not be, Mr. Darvil, according as I might happen or not to have pistols about me. But to the point. Quit this house without further debate, without noise, without mentioning to any one else your claim upon its owner—”
“Well, and the return?”