"You've stayed a bit long at the club, guv'nor," said Aubrey, applying a light to his cigarette and winking at his sister. "'Tisn't quite fair to worry Bess now—is it?"
"Be silent, sir!" Daniel Meggison turned upon him wrathfully. "What do you understand of my methods—or even of me? While you, sir—a mere hobbledehoy—a lout—a frequenter of low billiard saloons and such-like places—while you are wasting your time and your substance in a species of debauchery—your father is out and about in the world—looking here and there and everywhere for opportunities. While you are wasting the hard earnings of your sister, and squandering money to which you have no right, I am turning that brain which has never really failed me yet to account—and making money!"
By this time Daniel Meggison had worked himself into that state of mind in which he was quite prepared to believe that he really had done the wonderful thing he suggested. He soared in imagination in high finance; dabbled with this and with that; held the great world of money in the mere hollow of his hand. For the first time in his mean and shiftless life he had his grip upon a man who was prepared to pay largely and without question; and the education Daniel Meggison had received in a hard world had prepared him to meet such a man, and to deal with him in the right way. The more he talked the more his ideas grew, and the more certain he was that he had tapped at last a gold mine. Moreover, on this occasion he knew that he had played a stronger card than any he had ever held before; his glance shifted to the figure of the girl, and he recognized that her white face had a power to charm gold out of the pockets of Mr. Gilbert Byfield, and that in her very innocence as to the plot lay Meggison's real safety.
"You are excited, father dear," said Bessie, going to him with the intention to put him in his chair. But he boisterously put an arm about her, and stood thus in an attitude, facing the astonished Amelia and the contemptuous Aubrey.
"Excited! I should think so, indeed," he exclaimed. "Who would not be excited at the prospect of a sudden fortune—of an end to want and pinching and—and general meanness? Who would not be excited at the prospect of leaping, in one glorious moment, from Arcadia Street to affluence; of stepping in a moment gloriously out of the shadows in which for so long we have been plunged, into the splendid sunshine of riches and plenty? Excited!—I am drunk with excitement!"
"When you feel yourself fairly sober again, it mightn't be a bad idea to let us know what on earth you are talkin' about," suggested Aubrey, leaning against the mantelpiece, and presenting a bored expression to the company. "Not that I'm denyin', mind you, that you'd do a lot if you had the chance; you've always impressed that on us, so that we ain't likely to forget it. But what I argue is—show us something solid."
Mr. Daniel Meggison laughed an easy laugh. "Something solid, sir," he ejaculated. "What if I tell you that I can to-night produce, if necessary, a sum of fifty pounds——"
"Father!" The girl was clinging to his arm, looking at him in bewilderment.
"What if I tell you that that is but the beginning—the forerunner of many similar sums? Yes, my child, your father has at last justified an existence that has in the past not perhaps been all that it might have been. For the future, my dear Bessie, I will make amends; for the future our relative positions will be changed. No longer shall you trouble about lodgers—no longer shall you weigh this and that, or reckon how much a shilling will do in this direction or in that; all that is done with. We have for the first time in our lives that very necessary thing—an income."
"But, father, I don't understand," she pleaded. "What has happened? It's only some dream—something that in your good heart you wish might come true—for my sake."