“One moment, M. le Marquis, and I have done. But first of all, with your permission, shall we also review the assets in your life which we will have to use in order to arrive at the gratification of your earnest wish?”
“Assets? What do you mean?”
“The means to our end. You want money; we must find the means to get it for you.”
“I begin to understand,” he said, and drew his chair another inch or two closer to me.
“Firstly, M. le Marquis,” I resumed, and now my voice had become earnest and incisive, “firstly you have a wife, then you have a father-in-law whose wealth is beyond the dreams of humble people like myself, and whose one great passion in life is the social position of the daughter whom he worships. Now,” I added, and with the tip of my little finger I touched the sleeve of my aristocratic client, “here at once is your first asset. Get at the money-bags of papa by threatening the social position of his daughter.”
Whereupon my young gentleman jumped to his feet and swore and abused me for a mudlark and a muckworm and I don’t know what. He seized his malacca cane and threatened me with it, and asked me how the devil I dared thus to speak of Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour. He cursed, and he stormed and he raved of his sixteen quarterings and of my loutishness. He did everything in fact except walk out of the room.
I let him go on quite quietly. It was part of his programme, and we had to go through the performance. As soon as he gave me the chance of putting in a word edgeways I rejoined quietly:
“We are not going to hurt Madame la Marquise, Monsieur; and if you do not want the money, let us say no more about it.”
Whereupon he calmed down; after a while he sat down again, this time with his cane between his knees and its ivory knob between his teeth.
“Go on,” he said curtly.