“I am not to have a penny piece out of the transaction, if that be what you would imply,” Mr. Black replied.
“That was what I intended to imply,” said the other; “and if it be a fair question, Mr. Black, how did you chance to meet with this rara avis, who found the money to start your company and believed all you told him?”
Many a time in his life Mr. Black had been bullied, and rebuffed, and snubbed, and irritated, but never before, never, had he been so coolly insulted—so insolently addressed, as by the very ordinary-looking, elderly individual, who, still airing himself at the fire, looked the promoter over—turned him inside out, as calmly as though Mr. Black had been a bale of inferior goods submitted to his inspection.
There was an offensive superiority in Mr. Stewart’s manner which was very gall and wormwood to the person he addressed. Mr. Black would have liked to order him out of the office, and to have enforced that order with a due administration of boot leather; but, recollecting that kicking Mr. Stewart out would not help him personally along the road to fortune, he wisely restrained his feelings, and answered—
“I do not consider your question a fair one at all, sir. I never before came in contact with a gentleman who would not have hesitated about inquiring into such private particulars; but I have no objection to telling you how Mr. Dudley and I became acquainted. My wife is his aunt by marriage; that is how I came to know anything of Squire Dudley, of Berrie Down.”
“Now what the deuce does that mean?” said Mr. Stewart, reflectively; “aunt by marriage. You are not Mr. Dudley’s uncle, I presume?”
“Certainly not.”
“Then is Mrs. Black’s sister Mrs. Dudley?”
“She was until after her husband’s death, when she married a second time. There were four sisters,” glibly proceeded Mr. Black, “all daughters of Alderman Cuthbert; one died young, unmarried.”
“The gods loved her, then, we may conclude,” said Mr. Stewart, grimly.