"You are a great creature, Mr. Walker, a very great creature, and your power of sketching out a happy future is something wonderful. But to my great astonishment I find that I play a part in this notable scheme of your life, and that its being carried out successfully wholly depends upon me. Now, we may as well understand each other clearly, and at once. From me you'll never get another sixpence."
Foxey started, looked hard at his companion, and said, "You mean that?"
"No," said Lloyd, "I don't mean it literally; I'll give you another ten pounds on the day I leave this place."
It was Foxey's turn to sneer now. "That's generous of you," he said, "regular generous; but you always were a free-handed fellow with your money, Lloyd. I reck'lect we used to say in the old days how pleased you always were to have to part. Now look here," he cried, changing his tone; "I will have all I've asked from you: the money to square it with those fellows, the sum to start fresh with the straight tips from young Ticehurst's stable; I'll have this, or else--"
"Or what else?" asked Gilbert Lloyd, without any alteration in his usual calm manner.
"Or else I'll ruin you, root and branch; horse and foot; stock, lock, and barrel! You laugh and sneer; you think I can't do it? I tell you I can."
"You tell me a pack of lies and blather. You begun last night, and you've done nothing else for the last half-hour. How can you do it?"
"By blowing the gaff on you; by telling something I know which would make all these swells cut you and hunt you out of society; which would--"
"There, there's enough of this!" cried Lloyd, interrupting him; "my time's too valuable to waste over such trash. It's the old game of hush-money for a secret, after all. I should have thought you would have known some better dodge than that, Master Foxey, after all the life you've seen. If you were going in for the extortion-of-money business in your old age, you might have learned something fresher than that very stale device. Now, be off, and give me a wider berth for the future, if you're wise. Your drunken stupidity--for I suppose you would not have acted thus if you had not taken to drink--has lost you ten pounds. Take care it does not get you a horsewhipping." As he said these words he turned shortly on his heel and strode away.
Foxey looked after him, his face lit up with rage and disappointment. "All right, my fine-fellow," he muttered, shaking his fist at the fast-receding figure; "all right; you will have it, and you shall. It will be quite enough to cook your goose as it is; but if I'd only had time to learn a little more, I think I could have hanged you."