Taken aback, Adam answered: “I’m Viscount Lynton — yes.”

“No of?” said Mr Chawleigh acutely.

“No of,” corroborated Adam, with admirable gravity. “We Viscounts, you know, are a part of what you might call the scaff and raff of the peerage! No one under the rank of an Earl may use of!”

That’s something his lordship didn’t tell me,” Mr Chawleigh observed. “I daresay it don’t make much odds, but the fact is I did fancy an Earl. Still, a Viscount’s better than a Baron. A Baron’s no manner of use to me: you won’t budge me from that!” He directed another of his searching looks at Adam, and chuckled: “Ay, you’re wondering who the devil I am, and what I want with you, ain’t you?”

Adam laughed. “I do wonder what you want with me, but not who you are, sir! You are Lord Oversley’s friend. Won’t you sit down?”

Mr Chawleigh allowed himself to be shepherded to a chair, but said, keeping his shrewd eyes fixed on Adam’s face: “Told you that, did he? I take that kindly in him. I wouldn’t make so bold myself, though I don’t deny I’ve been able to nudge his lordship on to a sure thing now and now, and I’ve always found him very affable. But I’m no tuft-hunter, prating about my grand friends, Lord This and Lord That, which don’t bamboozle any but gapeseeds. You want to remember that!” he added, shooting out a thick finger at Adam. “You won’t find me setting up in Mayfair, all amongst the nobs, for I know well I’d be doing naught but making a bobbing-block of myself.” He refreshed himself with a pinch of snuff. “That’s better!” he announced, wiping his nose with a handkerchief of finest lawn. “Hardman’s 37: nothing to beat it!” He looked at Adam with a twinkle in his eyes. “So that’s all you know about me, is it? A friend of my Lord Oversley!” He brooded over this for a moment or two. “Didn’t tell you more than that, eh?”

“No,” Adam replied, adding, with a smile: “Having told me that there was no need to tell me more.”

“H’m! Didn’t tell you what my business with you is? I thought he would — though he did say he would leave me to lay to you my own way. Damme if he’s not a knowing one! Guessed I’d want more than his testimony before I’d come up to the chalk.” He nodded, and cast another penetrating stare at Adam. “If he had told you what I am he’d have told you that I’m mighty well up in the stirrups. I’m one as likes round dealing — which isn’t to say I won’t get a point the better of a man in a matter of trading, mark you! But there’s no one can say he was clerked by Jonathan Chawleigh! I run no rigs, my lord, because it ain’t my nature, and, what’s more, a good name’s worth a hundred Dutch bargains! I’ve got that all right and regular, and as for my credit, that’s good wherever there’s trading done. You’ll be wanting to know how I made my blunt — for I didn’t come into the world hosed and shod!”

Feeling slightly stunned, Adam was about to disclaim any such desire when his instinct warned him that his overpowering visitor would take this in bad part. He tried, therefore, to look as if he were interested. Mr Chawleigh smiled indulgently, and said: “I’ll wager you wouldn’t be much the wiser if I was to tell you, my lord, and that’s as it should be: each of his own last! You might say I was an India merchant, which is how I began in trade. I’m that, sure enough, but I’m some other things besides: in fact, I’ve got a finger in pretty well every pie that was worth the baking.”

“Forgive me,” said Adam, “but why do you tell me this?”

“It. might be,” said Mr Chawleigh, watching him, “that I’d be willing to stick a finger in your pie, my lord.”

“So I collect,” said Adam. “But if Lord Oversley has informed you that my pie is worth the baking I think I should tell you that he has misled you.”

“That’s as maybe. But I’ll tell you to your head, my lord, that the tip of my little finger in your pie would be enough to save your groats. Suppose I was to thrust my whole hand in?”

“You’d find yourself with a bad investment, Mr Chawleigh. I don’t know what Lord Oversley may have told you, but since I’ve no more liking for Dutch bargains than you have I’ll make it plain to you at once that my affairs are quite out of frame. I imagine you don’t invest your money without seeing at least the chance of a handsome return. I can’t offer you that If, as I suspect, you think of taking up a mortgage — ”

“I’ve got no interest in mortgages,” interrupted Mr Chawleigh. “Not but what I’d buy up those you’ve got already, and never ask a penny of you — if we reached an agreement! Nor I don’t want to buy that place of yours neither. It’s not money I’m looking for, my lord. It’s something different I want, and you may take it I’m ready to pay down my dust to get it — if I find the right article, which it may be I have done. Setting aside what his lordship says of you, I like the cut of your jib, my lord — no offence meant or taken, I hope!”

“None at all,” responded Adam, as much amused as bewildered. “I am obliged to you! But what is it that you do want of me?”

Mr Chawleigh sat champing his jaws for several moments, as though uncertain how to proceed. Finally, he scratched his head, and ejaculated: “Damme if anyone ever had to urge me to come to the point before in a matter of business! I’m a plain man, my lord, and how to wrap things up inclean linen I don’t know, nor don’t want to. The fact is, it ’ud have come better from his lordship. However, you’ve put the question to me downright, and I’ll give you a square answer: It’s your name I want, my lord.”

“My name?”

“Properly speaking,” amended Mr Chawleigh, “your title. Though an Earl was what I had in mind, supposing I couldn’t get a Marquis. A Duke I don’t hope for, and never did: you won’t find Jonathan Chawleigh casting beyond the moon! Dukes are above my touch, and no need to tell me so!”

“My dear sir, what are you talking about?” demanded Adam, in the liveliest astonishment. “I can’t give you my title!”

“Damme, I’m not such a nodcock that I don’t know that!” said Mr Chawleigh, with asperity. “It ain’t for myself I want it! It’s for my daughter!”

“Your daughter!”

Mr Chawleigh raised an enormous hand in a quelling gesture. “Easy, now! Don’t you go stiffening up till you’ve heard what I’ve got to say!”

“Are you acquainted with Wimmering — with my man of business?” demanded Adam.

“I’m not, but I’ll be happy to meet him — supposing we should come to an understanding. Not that I wouldn’t act as fair by you without any lawyer to oversee the bargain, but I don’t think the worse of you for wanting to make sure you ain’t being burnt. What’s more, I’d as lief settle it with a man of affairs. That way, well have it all shipshape and Bristol-fashion.”

“I beg your pardon! I fear I misled you. I asked the question — oh, for quite another reason!”

“Ay, did you? Well, maybe I can guess what that was,” said Mr. Chawleigh with his rather grim smile. “Don’t you get to thinking that because I’m a Jack Straw I’m a clod-pole besides! I’m as nacky a man as any in the City: I wouldn’t else have made my fortune! And if, as I’ll be bound he did, your man of business told you that the only way to bring yourself about was to get riveted to an heiress he told you no more than’s true, for all you may not like it, which I can see you don’t.”

Feeling more than a little battered, as much by his visitor’s discursiveness as by his forceful personality, Adam attempted to stem the flood. “Mr Chawleigh, pray do not — ”

“Now, wait a bit!” interrupted Mr Chawleigh, again raising his ham-like hand. “If you don’t care for the scheme you can say so, and no harm done, but I came here to make you an offer — provided I made up my mind that you’d suit, which I have done — and I’ll go through stitch with it, for that’s my way. I don’t think the worse of you for not leaping at it like a cock at a blackberry — in fact, I’d have bid you good-day, if you had — but it won’t hurt to hear what I’ve got to say. And the first thing I’ve got to say, so as there’ll be no misunderstanding betwixt us, is that I’ve a pretty fair notion how badly you’re dipped. That don’t matter to me, because it wasn’t you that played wily-beguiled with your fortune, which would have been quite another pair of shoes: I’ll frank no gamester, not if he was a dozen Marquises rolled into one! His lordship assures me you don’t bet nor play more than is genteel, and that I don’t object to, though I’m not a betting-man myself.” He paused, but Adam, realizing that nothing short of a brigade of nine-pounders would halt him, had resigned himself to the inevitable, and offered no comment. This seemed to please Mr Chawleigh, for he nodded, and smiled affably. “Well, now!” he said, settling himself in his chair with all the air of a man about to hold forth at length, “You’ll be wondering what made me take such a notion into my head, and I’ll tell you, my lord. I’ve no other chick nor child, nor never looked to have when Mrs Chawleigh was carried off. There were plenty that set their caps at me, mark you, for I was a pretty warm man then, but I never could fancy putting anyone in her place. She was a grand lass, my Mary! Sound as a roast, and came of good stock, too: yeoman-stock, and proud of it! She was thought to have married below her station when we got ourselves leg-shackled, but I swore I’d set her up in style before she was much older, and, by God, I did it! She died when Jenny was no more than three years old: died in childbed, and the brat with her — not that I cared for that, though it was a boy, like we’d hoped for. I’ll say no more about that, or I’ll be falling into the dismals. The thing is, when Jenny was born, Mrs Chawleigh said to me — thinking I’d be disappointed she wasn’t a son — ‘Jonathan,’ she said, ‘mark me if we don’t live to see her married to a lord! For the way you’re rising in the world,’ she said, ‘I don’t see what’s to stop her!’ Funning, she was, but the notion took both our fancies, and the long and the short of it is that when she died I made up my mind I’d marry Jenny according to her wish. And when Jonathan Chawleigh makes up his mind, my lord, he’s a hard man to baulk!”