"What are you going to tell me?" he asked. "I see there is some lurking
mischief in your mind. How was it you were at Ullerton when I was there?
I met you on the platform of the station, and I had a vague half
suspicion that you followed me up on more than one occasion. I saw a
glove in a man's parlour--a glove which I could have sworn to as yours.
But when I came back, you were so plausible with your talk of promoting
business, and so on, that I was fool enough to believe you. And I suppose
you cheated and tricked me after all?"
"Cheated and tricked are hard words, my dear Val," said the Captain, with
delightful blandness. "I had as much right to transact imaginary business
in the promoting line at Ullerton as you had to visit a fictitious aunt
at Dorking. Self-interest was the governing principle in both cases. I do
not think you can have any right to consider yourself injured by me if I
did steal a march upon you, and follow close upon your heels throughout
that Ullerton business. I do not think that you can have, on moral
grounds, any justification for making a complaint against your old ally."
"Well, I suppose you are right enough in that," said Valentine.
"Shake hands upon it, then. I have not very long to live, and I want to
feel myself at peace with mankind. You see, if you had come to me in the
first place, in a frank and generous spirit, and had said, 'My dear
friend, here is a good thing; let us go into it together, and see what
there is to be made out of it,' you would have placed the matter on such
a footing that, as a man of honour, I should have been bound to regard
your interests as my own.
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