“Lufton owes it to me to do more than this,” continued Mr. Sowerby; “but then Lufton is not here?”
“Why, he has just paid five thousand pounds for you.”
“Paid five thousand pounds for me! Indeed he has done no such thing: not a sixpence of it came into my hands. Believe me, Mark, you don’t know the whole of that yet. Not that I mean to say a word against Lufton. He is the soul of honour; though so deucedly dilatory in money matters. He thought he was right all through that affair, but no man was ever so confoundedly wrong. Why, don’t you remember that that was the very view you took of it yourself?”
“I remember saying that I thought he was mistaken.”
“Of course he was mistaken. And dearly the mistake cost me. I had to make good the money for two or three years. And my property is not like his. I wish it were.”
“Marry Miss Dunstable, and that will set it all right for you.”
“Ah! so I would if I had this money. At any rate I would bring it to the point. Now, I tell you what, Mark; if you’ll assist me at this strait I’ll never forget it. And the time will come round when I may be able to do something for you.”
“I have not got a hundred, no, not fifty pounds by me in the world.”
“Of course you’ve not. Men don’t walk about the streets with 400l. in their pockets. I don’t suppose there’s a single man here in the house with such a sum at his bankers’, unless it be the duke.”
“What is it you want then?”