“I do not deny it, Sir; but I feel in the enjoyment of excellent health. I rise at the same hour, and eat my meals as heartily as I did then; with every regret for the inconvenience I’m occasioning, I still profess to believe that my chances of life are pretty much as they were.” “Actuaries are the only people to entertain these points. Indeed, friends should not discuss them.” “Our friendship has stood the test of very delicate details so beautifully this morning, that I see no reason why we should not take all the benefit we can get out of it.” The fine sarcasm with which he spoke was thoroughly understood, though unnoticed, by the other, who went on: “When I mentioned actuaries, I merely meant to say that demands of this kind are not arbitrary or capricious--that they are based on laws established by long and abstruse calculations.” “Perhaps it is my fancy to imagine myself an exceptional case,” said Sir Within, with a faint smile. “They would take little count of this. They would say, ‘Here is a man aged----’” he paused for the other to fill up the blank. “Let us say one hundred,” said Sir Within, bowing. “Who has lived long in warm climates----” “Participating freely in the dissipations of his class and order,” said Sir Within, throwing back his head, and looking as though, with all the daring of this avowal, he defied scrutiny. “They’d not say forty thousand. I have my doubts if they’d give you five-and-thirty,” said the banker, curtly. “And under these circumstances, I should consider it my duty to break off the negotiation, and retire from the conference.” “Let us suppose, for talk sake, the arrangement possible. I conclude you would not insist upon that other matter--the settlement clause, I mean. You remember that Sir Hugh Rivers decided it was not to be maintained in law?” “The Attorney-General, with due submission, Sir, never saw the original document; he saw the draft, which was subsequently cancelled, and if there be any point upon which I will waive nothing--positively nothing--it is this.” “When a man insists so positively on his right to make a settlement, it is no unfair presumption to infer that he means to marry.” “The supposition might certainly be entertained,” said the old envoy, bowing with the courtesy he would have observed in a ministerial conference. “For _that_”--and the banker laid a most marked and peculiar emphasis on the word--“for that, most assuredly, I was not prepared.” “Nor can I say,” continued the other, “that I deemed it any part of my duty to submit such a possibility to your consideration.” “Perhaps not, Sir Within; there was no absolute reason why you should. You are, of course, the only judge of what concerns your own interests, or--or----” “Or happiness?” “I didn’t say happiness, simply because I thought it was the very consideration that you were about to omit.”