"To proceed a little further," the lawyer continued, "I am here to enquire, solely in your own interests and as a matter of business, whether you have made any definite agreement to pay for these shares? I am under the impression that your lordship mentioned a note of hand."
"I have signed," the Marquis acknowledged, "a bill, I believe the document was called, for forty thousand pounds, due in about two months' time."
"Has your lordship any idea as to how this liability is to be met?"
"None at all. It is possible that the shares will have advanced in value sufficiently to justify my selling them. If not, I take it that the bank will advance the sum against the scrip."
Mr. Wadham, Junior, could scarcely contain himself.
"Does your lordship know," he exclaimed, "that the bank hesitated about advancing a sum of less than a thousand pounds upon the security of those shares?"
The Marquis yawned.
"They will probably have changed their minds in two months' time," he remarked.
"But if they have not?" Mr. Wadham persisted.
"It is the unfortunate proclivity of you who are immersed in the narrow ways of legal procedure," his client observed, "to look only upon the worst side of a matter. Personally, I am an optimist. I rather expect to make a fortune on those shares."