"What makes you think so?"
"Leslie, let there be confidence between us; we can help each other. Shall we be friends?"
"With all my heart. But, though you may help me, how can I help you?"
"You have helped me already to Frank Hazeldean and the Casino estate. All clever men can help me. Come, then, we are friends; and what I say is secret. You ask me why I think there will be a general election so soon? I will answer you frankly. Of all the public men I ever met with, there is no one who has so clear a vision of things immediately before him as Audley Egerton."
"He has that character. Not far-seeing, but clear-sighted to a certain limit."
"Exactly so. No one better, therefore, knows public opinion, and its immediate ebb and flow."
"Granted."
"Egerton, then, counts on a general election within three months; and I have lent him the money for it."
"Lent him the money! Egerton borrow money of you—the rich Audley Egerton!"
"Rich!" repeated Levy in a tone impossible to describe, and accompanying the word with that movement of the middle finger and thumb, commonly called a "snap," which indicates profound contempt.