“Rubbish!” cried the baronet contemptuously. “You want to get money out of me! But you shan't!—not a damned penny!”
“I do want to get money from you, sir,” said Richard. “I kept the poor fellow alive—kept him in dinners at least, him and his sister, till I fell ill and couldn't work.”
At the word sister the baronet grew calmer. It was nothing about the lost heir! The other sort did not matter: they were no use against the enemy!
Richard paused. The baronet stared.
“I haven't a penny to call my own, or I should not have come to you,” resumed Richard.
“I thought so! That's your orthodox style! But you've come to the wrong man!” returned sir Wilton. “I never give anything to beggars.”
He did not in the least doubt what he heard, but he scarcely knew what he answered—wondering where he had seen the fellow, and how he came to be so like his wife. The remembered ugliness of her infant prevented all suggestion that this handsome fellow might be the same.
“You are the last man, sir Wilton, from whom I would ask anything for myself,” said Richard.
“Why so?”
Richard hesitated. To let him suspect the same claim in himself, would be fatal.