“Well, it ain't dear! Ten centimes is a penny—a trifle less than a penny. And now, Bramleigh, will you think it a great liberty of me, if I ask you a question,—a sort of personal question?”
“That will pretty much depend upon the question, Mr. Cutbill. There are matters, I must confess, I would rather not be questioned on.”
“Well, I suppose I must take my chance for that! If you are disposed to bristle up, and play porcupine because I want to approach you, it can't be helped—better men than Tom Cutbill have paid for looking into a wasp's nest. It's no idle curiosity prompts my inquiry, though I won't deny there is a spice of curiosity urging me on at this moment. Am I free to go on, eh?”
“I must leave you to your own discretion, sir.”
“The devil a worse guide ever you 'd leave me to. It is about as humble a member of the Cutbill family as I'm acquainted with. So that without any reference to my discretion at all, here 's what I want. I want to know how it is that you 've left a princely house, with plenty of servants and all the luxuries of life, to come and live in a shabby corner of an obscure town and smoke penny cigars? There's the riddle I want you to solve for me.”
For some seconds Bramleigh's confusion and displeasure seemed to master him completely, making all reply impossible; but at last he regained a degree of calm, and with a voice slightly agitated, said, “I am sorry to balk your very natural curiosity, Mr. Cutbill, but the matter on which you seek to be informed is one strictly personal and private.”
“That's exactly why I'm pushing for the explanation,” resumed the other, with the coolest imaginable manner. “If it was a public event I 'd have no need to ask to be enlightened.”
Bramleigh winced under this rejoinder, and a slight contortion of the face showed what his self-control was costing him.
Cutbill, however, went on, “When they told me, at the Gresham, that there was a man setting up a claim to your property, and that you declared you 'd not live in the house, nor draw a shilling from the estate, till you were well assured it was your own beyond dispute, my answer was, 'No son of old Montague Bramleigh ever said that. Whatever you may say of that family, they 're no fools.'”
“And is it with fools you would class the man who reasoned in this fashion?” said Augustus, who tried to smile and seem indifferent as he spoke.