"Because—because—hang it all! If I let this fellow keep ahead of me—why, I should come in second best."
"You say keep ahead of me. Do you think he's ahead of you now?"
Ashley straightened himself. He looked uncomfortable. "He's got a pull, by Jove! He made that journey to France—and cracked me up to the Marquise—and wheedled her round—when all the while he must have known that he was hammering nails into his own coffin. He did it, too, after I'd insulted him and we'd had a row."
"Oh, that's nothing. To a fellow like him that sort of thing comes easy."
"It wouldn't come easy to me, by Jove!"
"Then it would be all the more to your credit, if you ever did anything of the kind."
The Englishman bounded away. Once more he began to pace the floor restlessly. The old man took his pipe from a tray, and his tobacco-pouch from a drawer. Having filled the bowl, with meditative leisure he looked round for a match. "Got a light?"
Ashley struck a vesta on the edge of his match-box and applied it to the old man's pipe.
"Should you say," he asked, while doing it, "that I ought to attempt anything in that line?"
"Certainly not—unless you want to—to get ahead."