"Of course not. That's your text, and you'll stick to it. But you _do_ know what I mean, and you shall know what I mean, if plain words can tell you. You and I had a friend, Phil. He was a good friend to me, and I liked him as much as a man of the world can afford to like anybody. If I had been down in the world, and had asked him for a hundred pounds to give me a new start in life, I think he'd have said, 'George, here's a cheque for you.' _That's_ my notion of a friend. And yet I stood by that man's deathbed, and saw him sinking, and knew what ailed him, and didn't stretch out my hand to save him." "Be so good as to move away from that door," said Mr. Sheldon, livid to the lips with smothered fury, but able to put on a bold front nevertheless. "I didn't come here to listen to rhodomontade of this kind, or to bandy words with you. Get out of my way." "Not till I've said my say. There shall be no rhodomontade this time. I stood by and saw my best friend murdered--by you. I kept my counsel for your sake, and when you had made your fortune--by his death--I asked you for a little money. You know how much you gave me, and how graciously you gave it. If you had given me twenty times the sum you gained by Tom Halliday's death, I would give it back, and twenty times as much again, to bring him back to life, and to feel that I had never aided and abetted a murderer. Yes, by God, I would! though I'm not straitlaced or over-scrupulous at the best of times. But that's past, and all the money in the Bank of England wouldn't undo what you did in Fitzgeorge Street. But if you try on any such tricks with Tom Halliday's daughter, if _that's_ the scheme you've hatched for getting hold of this money, as surely as we two live, I'll let in the light upon your doings, and save the girl whose father you murdered. I will, Philip, let come what may. You can't get _me_ out of the way when it suits you, you see. _I know you._ That's the best antidote against your medicines." "If you'll be so good as to say these things on 'Change, I can bring an action for libel, or get you put into a madhouse. There's no good in saying them here." Philip Sheldon, even in this crisis, was less agitated than his brother, being of a harder nature, and less subject to random impulses of good or evil. He caught his accuser by the collar of his coat, and flung him violently from the doorway. Thus ended his visit to Gray's Inn. Boldly as he had borne himself during the interview, he went to his office profoundly depressed and dispirited. "So I am to have him against me?" he said to himself. "He can do me no real harm; but he can harass and annoy me. If he should drop any hint to Hawkehurst?--but he'll scarcely do that. Perhaps I've ridden him a little too roughly in the past. And yet if I'd been smoother, where would his demands have ended? No; concession in these cases means ruin."