“No,” the promoter eagerly replied; glad, at last, perhaps, to find some point where he could contradict Mr. Stewart with advantage. “No, Mr. Dudley is the person who found the capital to work this company. So far, he has not derived one shilling benefit from it. He is not a business man; he has gone into this scheme solely on my recommendation.” “Is he an idiot?” asked Mr. Stewart. “I have not associated much with idiots,” was the reply, “and am therefore less competent to decide that question than you might be. But I should say, no. Considering he is a gentleman, and apt to believe what people tell him, I never saw any especial weakness of intellect about him. He is not rich, and yet he has, as I said, found the money to carry this matter through. When those premises in Lincoln’s Inn were for sale, I advised him to buy them, and promised that they should be purchased by the company at a considerable advance on the price he paid. I consider the sum asked a fair sum; whether he make a profit or not, is no concern of ours.” “Of mine, you mean,” amended Mr. Stewart. “It may be very much of your concern.” “I am not to have a penny piece out of the transaction, if that be what you would imply,” Mr. Black replied. “That was what I intended to imply,” said the other; “and if it be a fair question, Mr. Black, how did you chance to meet with this _rara avis_, who found the money to start your company and believed all you told him?” Many a time in his life Mr. Black had been bullied, and rebuffed, and snubbed, and irritated, but never before, never, had he been so coolly insulted—so insolently addressed, as by the very ordinary-looking, elderly individual, who, still airing himself at the fire, looked the promoter over—turned him inside out, as calmly as though Mr. Black had been a bale of inferior goods submitted to his inspection. There was an offensive superiority in Mr. Stewart’s manner which was very gall and wormwood to the person he addressed. Mr. Black would have liked to order him out of the office, and to have enforced that order with a due administration of boot leather; but, recollecting that kicking Mr. Stewart out would not help him personally along the road to fortune, he wisely restrained his feelings, and answered— “I do not consider your question a fair one at all, sir. I never before came in contact with a gentleman who would not have hesitated about inquiring into such private particulars; but I have no objection to telling you how Mr. Dudley and I became acquainted. My wife is his aunt by marriage; that is how I came to know anything of Squire Dudley, of Berrie Down.” “Now what the deuce does that mean?” said Mr. Stewart, reflectively; “aunt by marriage. You are not Mr. Dudley’s uncle, I presume?” “Certainly not.” “Then is Mrs. Black’s sister Mrs. Dudley?”