"Sir," said Mr Wog, sternly, "when I explained to you the nature of my commercial success, it was to convey to you the idea of my smartness, not of my meanness. I am not aware of having said anything to lead you to suppose that I could so far degrade myself as to become a politician."
"What a comfort it will be," I remarked, "when the rotten old despotisms of Europe, and the political ambitions that belong to them, shall have crumbled to the dust, and when we have instead the free and glorious institutions of the West, which seem to offer nothing to tempt a man from the ennobling pursuit of hard cash!" But Mr Wog failed to appreciate the force of my remark, as he was intently endeavouring to catch the purport of a very private conversation carried on by a group a few yards off, towards which he gradually edged, in the hope that he might be able either to acquire or impart some interesting information.
Spiffy looked more humbled and crestfallen than I had ever seen him; but remembering that he had still a score unsettled, in consequence of the remark which Mr Wog's arrival had interrupted, he said, maliciously,—
"By the way, what is the real state of the case about you and Lady Ursula? I don't apologise for asking, as I am sure you must want the right version to be known both for your sake and hers."
"The right version is simply that I neither am at this moment nor ever have been engaged to Lady Ursula."
"Then why did you tell Helter you were, and why are you pulling the family through their difficulties?"
"Because Helter was provoking me almost as much as you are, though I admit that is no reason why I should not have told the truth. As for the motives which actuate me in meddling in those pecuniary transactions in which you and Lady Broadhem are implicated, I am afraid you would not understand them if I were to attempt to explain them. It is a complicated business altogether. We shall get through it most satisfactorily by each minding our own share of it," I said significantly, and I walked off to a table where Broadhem was writing letters. I had not seen him since my interview with his sister. He looked gloomy and discontented, and gave me a cold glance of recognition. "How are you, Broadhem? I suppose Lady Ursula told you the result of our conversation," I said in a low tone, and took a chair by his side.
He nodded sulkily, and showed a disposition to cut me. My last few words with Spiffy had not left me in a mood to be cut unresistingly, so I said sharply, "Well, I hope both you and Lady Broadhem will contradict the perfectly unfounded report you were the means of spreading. I need not say that I shall do my share, and I trust that you will profit by the lesson you have received not to interfere in matters of this sort again."
"I tell you what it is, Frank," said Broadhem, who felt that somehow I was more to blame than he was, but who was taken aback by my turning the tables upon him so suddenly; "if it was not that duelling is exploded, and that it would be against my principles at any rate, I would shoot you."
"By way of helping to clear your property of its encumbrances," I added. "Your mother has put everything into my hands, and I can do pretty much what I please with the whole family."