"Don't call it _following_, dear friend, because that's low. Accident brought me into this neighbourhood at the very hour you were coming into this neighbourhood. If you want to quarrel with anything, quarrel with the doctrine of chances, not with me." Henry Dunbar turned away with a sulky gesture. His friend watched him with very much the same malicious grin that had distorted his face under the lamp-lit porch at Maudesley. The Major looked like a vulgar-minded Mephistopheles: there was not even the "divinity of hell" about him. "And so you've been buying diamonds?" he repeated presently, after a considerable pause. "Yes, I have. I am buying them for a necklace for my daughter." "You are so dotingly fond of your daughter!" said the Major with a leer. "It is necessary that I should give her a present." "Precisely, and you won't even trust the business to a jeweller; you insist on doing it all yourself." "I shall do it for less money than a jeweller." "Oh, of course," answered Major Vernon; "the motive's as clear as daylight." He was silent for a few minutes, then he laid his hand heavily upon his companion's shoulder, put his lips close to the banker's ear, and said, in a loud voice, for it was not easy for him to make himself heard above the jolting of the cab,— "Henry Dunbar, you're a very clever fellow, and I dare say you think yourself a great deal sharper than I am; but, by Heaven, if you try any tricks with me, you'll find yourself mistaken! You must buy me an annuity. Do you understand? Before you move right or left, or say your soul's your own, you must buy me an annuity!" The banker shook off his companion's hand, and turned round upon him, pale, stern, and defiant. "Take care, Stephen Vallance," he said; "take care how you threaten me. I should have thought you knew me of old, and would be wise enough to keep a civil tongue in your head, with _me_. As for what you ask, I shall do it, or I shall let it alone—as I think fit. If I do it, I shall take my own time about it, not yours." "You're not afraid of me, then?" asked the other, recoiling a little, and much more subdued in his tone. "No!" "You are very bold." "Perhaps I am. Do you remember the old story of some people who had a goose that laid golden eggs? They were greedy, and, in their besotted avarice, they killed the goose. But they have not gone down to posterity as examples of wisdom. No, Vallance, I'm not afraid of you." Mr. Vallance leaned back in the cab, biting his nails savagely, and thinking. It seemed as if he was trying to find an answer for Mr. Dunbar's speech: but, if so, he must have failed, for he was silent for the rest of the drive: and when he got out of the vehicle, by-and-by, before the door of the Clarendon, his manner bore an undignified resemblance to that of a half-bred cur who carries his tail between his legs.