“You’ve held too long, Purslow,” Arthur replied. “I told you it was a quick shot. A fortnight ago you’d have got out with a good profit. Why didn’t you?”
“But they were rising—rising nicely. And I thought, sir——”
“You thought you’d hold them for a bit more? That was the long and short of it, wasn’t it? Well, my advice to you now is to get out while you can make a profit.”
“Sell?” the draper exclaimed. “Now?” It is hard to say what he had expected, but something more than this. “But I should not clear more than—why, I shouldn’t make——”
“Better make what you can,” Arthur replied, and rode on a little more cavalierly than he would have ridden a few months before.
He did not reflect how easy it is to sow the seeds of distrust. Purslow, left alone to make the best of cold comfort, felt for the first time that his interests were not the one care of the bank. For the first time he saw the bank as something apart, a machine, cold, impassive, indifferent, proceeding on its course unmoved by his fortunes, good or bad, his losses or his gains. It was a picture that chilled him, and set him thinking.
Arthur, meantime, left his horse at the stables and let himself into the bank by the house-door. As he laid his hat and whip on the table in the hall, he caught the sound of an angry voice. It came from the bank parlor. He hesitated an instant, then he made up his mind, and stepping that way he opened the door.
The voice was Wolley’s. The man was on his feet, angry, protesting, gesticulating. Ovington, his lips set, the pallor of his handsome face faintly tinged with color, sat behind his table, his elbows on the arms of his chair, his fingertips meeting.
Arthur took it all in. Then, “You don’t want me?” he said, and he made as if he would close the door again. “I thought that you were alone, sir.”
“No, stay,” Ovington answered. “You may as well hear what Mr. Wolley has to say, though I have told him already——”