Mr. Binney went out of Blathgowrie's lodgings and into the street in a white heat of indignation. His blood boiled within him at the indignity to which he had been subjected. Was it possible that he, Peter Binney, the founder of a great commercial house, the Bloomsbury ratepayer, the almost successful candidate for the London County Council, had been told in so many words by a mere slip of an impudent boy that his society was not wanted by him and his callow friends? What next! he wondered. As if he cared for their contemptible society! Pshaw! It was the other way about. If they had had the slightest idea how his name was respected in the City, they would have sung a _very_ different tune. He wouldn't have their acquaintance now, or join their precious clubs if the committee went down on their bended knees and begged him to do so. He flung into his rooms burning with anger against the whole insolent crew of them, and most of all against his son, Lucius, whom he unjustly accused of being the disloyal cause of his late reverse. "Ah, Binney, I thocht ye wouldn't be long, and I'd just wait for ye," said a voice with a strong Scotch accent, from the depths of Mr. Binney's armchair. "Oh, that you, M'Gee!" said Mr. Binney. "I'm pleased to see you. But you'll excuse me for being a little upset. I've just undergone a piece of monstrous impertinence from my Lord Blathgowrie, and I scarcely know how to contain my anger." "Toch!" exclaimed M'Gee. "What for do ye want to mix yourself up with such trash? I've come to talk to you about the Union. Sit down, man, and listen." M'Gee, like Mr. Binney, was a freshman, and like Mr. Binney again, had come up to Cambridge many years later than the average young man enters upon his University course. He was the son of a Highland gillie, and had succeeded with incredible difficulty, as far as money was concerned, in gaining a degree at a Scotch University. But that had not sufficed for him. He was ambitious, and extremely tenacious of ideas. He had early made up his mind to bring his brains to the market of Cambridge, and at Cambridge he accordingly found himself at the age of thirty-seven, with a scholarship at St. John's College, and nothing else upon which to support himself except his determination to succeed to the highest honours that Cambridge could afford. He had joined the Union with a shrewd and resolute eye to the President's chair, but the lighter social success which held such a charm from Mr. Binney's point of view he regarded with the most lofty scorn. Self-contained and self-reliant as he was, however, he was not entirely without a human weakness for sympathy and encouragement in his aims, and had fixed upon Mr. Binney, as one who shared with him some of the accidents of his position, with whom to indulge in the occasional luxury of discussing his ambitions.