Say what you have to say and get done with it, or I
shall leave you."

"Well," said Francis, after a pause, in which he was perhaps estimating
his own powers of persuasion against his brother's powers of resistance,
and coming to the conclusion that it was not worth his while to contend
with him any longer, "I have come to say this. I am hard up--devilish
hard up. But that's not all. It is not enough to offer me a five-pound
note or a ten-pound note and tell me to spend it as I please. I want
something definite. You seem to have plenty of money: I have none. I
want an allowance, or else a sum of money down, sufficient to take Mary
and myself to the Colonies. I don't think that is much to ask."

"Don't you?"

The icy tone which Oliver assumed exasperated his brother.

"No, be hanged if I think it is!" he said vehemently, though still in
lowered tones. "I want two hundred a year--it's little enough: or two or
three thousand on the nail. Give me that, and I'll not trouble you or
Rosy any more."

"And where do you suppose that I'm to get two or three thousand pounds,
or two hundred a year?"

"I don't care where you get it, so long as you hand it over to me."

"Very sorry I can't oblige you," said Oliver, nonchalantly "but as your
proposition is a perfect impossibility, I don't see my way to saying
anything else."

"You think I don't mean it, do you?" growled his brother. "I tell you
that I will have it. And if I don't have it I'll not hold my tongue any
longer. I'll ruin you."

"Don't talk in that melodramatic way," said Oliver, quietly. But his lip
twitched a little as if something had touched him unpleasantly. "You
know very well that you have no more power of ruining me than you have
of flying to yonder moon. You can't substantiate any of your stories.
You can blacken me in the eyes of a few persons who know me, perhaps;
but really I doubt your power of doing that. People wouldn't believe
you, you know; and they would believe me. There is so much moral power
in a good hat and patent leather boots."

"Do you dare to trifle with me----" the man was beginning, furiously,
but Oliver checked him with a slight pressure on his arm, and went on
suavely.

"All this threatening sort of business is out of date, as you ought to
know. One would think that you had been to the Surrey-side Theatres,
lately, or the Porte St. Martin, and taken lessons of a stage villain.
'Beware! I will be revenged,' and all that sort of th