splendour--that in itself was distasteful to the degenerated bravo. But
he felt as if he should be at more disadvantage in point of argument with
a cool and wary representative of Darrell's interests, than he should
be even with Darrell himself. And unable to produce the child whom he
arrogated the right to obtrude, he should be but exposed to a fire of
cross-questions without a shot in his own locker. Accordingly he
declined, point-blank, to see Colonel Morley; and declared that the terms
he himself had proposed were the lowest he would accept. "Tell Colonel
Morley, however, that if negotiations fail, I shall not fail, sooner or
later, to argue my view of the points in dispute with my kind father-in-
law, and in person."

"Yes, hang it!" cried Poole, exasperated; "go and see Darrell yourself.
He is easily found."

"Ay," answered Jasper, with the hardest look of his downcast sidelong
eye--"Ay; some day or other it may come to that. I would rather not,
if possible. I might not keep my temper. It is not merely a matter of
money between us, if we two meet. There are affronts to efface.
Banished his house like a mangy dog--treated by a jackanapes lawyer like
the dirt in the kennel! The Loselys, I suspect, would have looked down
on the Darrells fifty years ago; and what if my father was born out of
wedlock, is the blood not the same? Does the breed dwindle down for want
of a gold ring and priest? Look at me. No; not what I now am; not even
as you saw me five years ago; but as I leapt into youth! Was I born to
cast sums and nib pens as a City clerk? Aha, my poor father, you were
wrong there! Blood will out! Mad devil, indeed, is a racer in a
citizen's gig! Spavined, and wind-galled, and foundered--let the brute
go at last to the knockers; but by his eye, and his pluck, and his bone,
the brute shows the stock that he came from!"