"And playing the spy upon me."
"Not at all, dear boy. It was merely a coincidence, I assure you. I called at the bank yesterday, cashed my cheques, ascertained your address; called at the Clarendon this morning, was told you'd that minute gone out; looked down Albemarle Street; there you were, sure enough; saw you get into a cab; got into another—a Hansom, and faster than yours—came behind you to the corner of this street."
"You followed me," said Henry Dunbar, bitterly.
"Don't call it following, dear friend, because that's low. Accident brought me into this neighbourhood at the very hour you were coming into this neighbourhood. If you want to quarrel with anything, quarrel with the doctrine of chances, not with me."
Henry Dunbar turned away with a sulky gesture. His friend watched him with very much the same malicious grin that had distorted his face under the lamp-lit porch at Maudesley. The Major looked like a vulgar-minded Mephistopheles: there was not even the "divinity of hell" about him.
"And so you've been buying diamonds?" he repeated presently, after a considerable pause.
"Yes, I have. I am buying them for a necklace for my daughter."
"You are so dotingly fond of your daughter!" said the Major with a leer.
"It is necessary that I should give her a present."
"Precisely, and you won't even trust the business to a jeweller; you insist on doing it all yourself."