'Sir Ranald Cheyne seems to have been anticipating his income.'
'Till, I suppose, there is nothing more to anticipate.'
'Exactly.'
'Good—good!' exclaimed Cadbury, as he struck his gloved hands together; 'then you'll put the screw on him the moment you can do so.'
'Before this week is out, my lord. There is one acceptance there for £300 on which the three days of grace are yet to run, and then I shall act upon the whole. Your lordship gave me carte blanche to acquire all these documents, and, having done so, your money must be repaid to you through me.'
'Precisely so.'
The two shook hands, and again Cadbury dived into the choking fog, to make his way westward to his club as best he might, feeling assured that an unexpected pressure would now be put upon the luckless Alison, by means of her father's mental misery and inordinate pride.
He knew how intense was the girl's devotion to the old man; he knew also that the latter, with all his love for his daughter, was not without a considerable spice of gross selfishness in his nature; that he loved the good things of this life very much, all the more that many were gone, and more might go, utterly beyond his reach, unless some one interposed to save him; and so Cadbury chuckled as he thought of the fatal ball he had set in motion with the aid of Mr. Solomon Slagg.
And that evening, when in the brilliantly lighted dining-room of his magnificent and luxurious club in Pall Mall, after a sybarite repast, with many curious and elaborate entrées, he drank his Clicquot Veuve and Schloss Johannisberg, not an atom of compunction occurred to him for the misery he was working the poor but proud old baronet, and the sweet girl, whom, bon gré mal gré, he had resolved to make his wife.