ld, when all I get for it is what
I equally get out of you, with my ace of trumps still in my hands?
Basta!--I say again Basta! It is evidently an object to Darrell to get
rid of all fear that Sophy should ever pounce upon him tooth and claw:
if he be so convinced that she is not his daughter's child, why make
a point of my saying that I told him a fib, when I said she was?
Evidently, too, he is afraid of my power to harass and annoy him; or
why make it a point that I shall only nibble his cheese in a trap at the
world's end, stared at by bushmen, and wombats, and rattlesnakes, and
alligators, and other American citizens or British settlers! L200 a
year, and my wife's father a millionaire! The offer is an insult. Ponder
this: put on the screw; make them come to terms which I can do them the
honour to accept; meanwhile, I will trouble you for my four sovereigns."

Poole had the chagrin to report to the Colonel, Jasper's refusal of the
terms proposed, and to state the counter-proposition he was commissioned
to make. Alban was at first surprised, not conjecturing the means of
supply, in his native land, which Jasper had secured in the coffers
of Poole himself. On sounding the unhappy negotiator as to Jasper's
reasons, he surmised, however, one part of the truth--viz., that Jasper
built hopes of better terms precisely on the fact that terms had been
offered to him at all; and this induced Alban almost to regret that he
had made any such overtures, and to believe that Darrell's repugnance to
open the door of conciliation a single inch to so sturdy a mendicant was
more worldly-wise than Alban had originally supposed. Yet partly, even
for Darrell's own security and peace, from that persuasion of his own
powers of management which a consummate man of the world is apt to
entertain, and partly from a strong curiosity to see the audacious soil
of that poor dear rascal Willy, and examine himself into the facts he
asserted, and the objects he aimed at, Alban bade Poole inform Jasper
that Colonel Morley would be quite willing to convince him, in a
personal interview, of the impossibility of acceding to the propositions
Jasper had made; and that he should be still more willing to see the
young person whom Jasper asserted to be the child of his marriage.

Jasper, after a moment's moody deliberation, declined to meet Colonel
Morley, actuated to some extent in that refusal by the sensitive vanity
which once had given him delight, and now