"We understood that you meant to be married."
"I never said so. I never said a word about marriage. I am now going back, and mean to manage the mine myself."
"Yes; I shall ask you. But I have two-thirds. I will give you for your share 10 per cent more than the price you offered me for each of my shares. If you do not like that, you need not accept the offer; but I don't mean to have any more words about it."
Mr Fitzwalker Tookey's face became longer and longer, and he did in truth feel himself to be much aggrieved within his very soul. There were still two lines of conduct open to him. He might move the stern man by a recapitulation of the sorrow of his circumstances, or he might burst out into passionate wrath, and lay all his ruin to his partner's doing. He might still hope that in this latter way he could rouse all Kimberley against Gordon, and thus creep back into some vestige of property under the shadow of Gordon's iniquities. He would try both. He would first endeavour to move the stern man to pity. "I don't think you can imagine the condition in which you are about to place me."
"I can't admit that I am placing you anywhere."
"I'll just explain. Of course I know that I can tell you everything in strictest confidence."
"Oh yes; I can. You remember the story of my poor wife?"
"What! She got back from the Portuguese settlement?"
"Yes. She did not stay there long. I don't suppose that the Portuguese are very nice people."
"At any rate they don't have much money among them."
"Not after the lavish expenditure of the diamond-fields," suggested Gordon.
"Just so. Poor Matilda had been accustomed to all that money could buy for her. I never used to be close-fisted with her, though sometimes I would be tight."
"As far as I could understand, you never used to agree at all."
"I don't think we did hit it off. Perhaps it was my fault."
"You used to be a little free in your way of living."
"I was. I confess that I was so. I was young then, but I am older now. I haven't touched a B. and S. before eleven o'clock since I have been in London above two or three times. I do mean to do the best I can for my young family." It was the fact that Mr Tookey had three little children boarding out in Kimberley.