The two men looked at each other—Drayton suspicious, Hugh Ritson with amused contempt.
"Tell you what, you don't catch me hobnobbing with them gentry," said Drayton, recovering his composure.
Hugh Ritson made no other answer than a faint smile. As he looked into the face of Drayton, he was telling himself that no man had ever before been at the top of such a situation as that of which he himself was then the master. Here was a man who was the half-brother of Greta, and the living image of her husband. Here was a man who, despite vague suspicions, did not know his own identity. Here was a man over whom hung an inevitable punishment. Hugh Ritson smiled at the daring idea he had conceived of making this man personate himself.
"Drayton," he said, "I mean to stand your friend in this trouble."
"Tell you again, the best friend to me is the man as helps me to make my lucky."
"You shall do it, Drayton, this very night. Listen to me. That man, my brother, as they call him—Paul Ritson, as his name goes—is not my father's son. He is the son of my mother by another man, and his true name is Paul Lowther."
"I don't care what his true name is, nor his untrue, neither. It ain't nothing to me, say I, and no more is it."
"Would it be anything to you to inherit five thousand pounds?"
"What?"
"Paul Lowther is the heir to as much. What would you say if I could put you in Paul Lowther's place, and get you Paul Lowther's inheritance?"