“I marry again? Good God, Fillmore! If everybody else were as far from that as I am, the child born to-day would see the end of the world. No, no: I’d sooner give up business altogether. There are times, begad, when I wish I had given it up twenty years ago.”
The baronet said this with so much emphasis that Fillmore, after looking at him for a few moments, said:
“What times are those, Bendibow?”
“It’s rather a long story,” the other replied; and hesitated, wrinkling his forehead. As Fillmore kept silence, he presently resumed: “You know what confidence I have always reposed in you. To others I show myself only as the banker, or the man of the world; but to you, my dear Fillmore, I have always opened myself without disguise. You comprehend my character; and I suppose you would say that I’m a fair average specimen of the genus homo—eh?”
“If you require my opinion of you, I can give it,” replied Fillmore quietly.
“Well, ’tis not often one gets his portrait drawn by an artist like you,” said the baronet laughingly. “ ‘Extenuate naught, nor set down aught in malice,’ as Charley Kean has it. I expect to be edified, I assure you.”
“To begin with, your bank is the last place where I should think of putting my money,” said Fillmore, with deliberation.
“What the dooce...!”
“You may be as prosperous as report says you are,” continued Fillmore; “but you are a gambler to the marrow of your bones. You have put money in ventures which promised cent per cent: but they were carried on at imminent risk of ruin. If you have not been ruined, you have only your luck to thank for it. I like you well enough; and you have made a great success for a man of your beginnings; but you have no more morality than there is in that decanter of claret. Don’t take offense, Sir Francis. The day I find you, or any other man, committing a crime of which no alteration in my circumstances or temperament could have rendered me capable, that day I shall throw up my profession and become a journeyman evangelist. We have always been on friendly terms, and I shall never take advantage of facts about you that have come to my knowledge; but ... well, are you determined to be indignant?”
“Damme, sir, you have insulted me in your own house! I—”