“With money. Understand, my boy,” added the Professor in a genial way which he knew well how to assume, “I should have preferred Lucy becoming your wife. However, since she prefers Hope, there's no more to be said on that score. I therefore will not make the offer I came here to make.”
“An offer, sir?”
“Yes! I fancied that you loved Lucy and were broken-hearted by the news of her engagement to Hope. I therefore intended to ask you to give me, or rather lend me, five hundred pounds on condition that I helped you to—”
“Stop, Professor,” said Random, coloring, “I should never have bought Miss Kendal as my wife on those terms.”
“Of course! of course! and—as I say—there is no more to be said. I shall therefore agree to Lucy's engagement to Hope”—Braddock carefully omitted to say that he had already agreed and had been paid one thousand pounds to agree—“and will congratulate you when you lead Donna Inez to the altar.”
“I never said anything about Donna Inez, Professor Braddock.”
“Of course not: modern reticence. However, I can see through a brick wall as well as most people. I understand, so let us drop the subject, my boy. And this five hundred pounds—”
“I cannot lend it to you, Professor. The fact is, I lost heaps of coin at Monte Carlo, and am not in a position to—”
“Very good, let us shelve that also,” said Braddock with apparent heartiness, although he was really very angry at his failure. “I am sorry, though, as I wish to get back the mummy and to revenge poor Sidney Bolton's death.”