The banker smiled: strange to say, he was pleased with the compliment.

"But," resumed Darvil, helping himself to another slice of beef, "you
are in the wrong box--planted in Queer Street, as /we/ say in London;
for if you care a d--n about my daughter's respectability, you will
never muzzle her father on suspicion of theft--and so there's tit for
tat, my old gentleman!"

"I shall deny that you are her father, Mr. Darvil; and I think you will
find it hard to prove the fact in any town where I am a magistrate."

"By goles, what a good prig you would have made! You are as sharp as a
gimlet. Surely you were brought up at the Old Bailey!"

"Mr. Darvil, be ruled. You seem a man not deaf to reason, and I ask you
whether, in any town in this country, a poor man in suspicious
circumstances can do anything against a rich man whose character is
established? Perhaps you are right in the main: I have nothing to do
with that. But I tell you that you shall quit this house in half an
hour--that you shall never enter it again but at your peril; and if you
do--within ten minutes from that time you shall be in the town gaol. It
is no longer a contest between you and your defenceless daughter; it is
a contest between--"

"A tramper in fustian, and a gemman as drives a coach," interrupted
Darvil, laughing bitterly, yet heartily. "Good--good!"

The banker rose. "I think you have made a very clever definition,"
said he. "Half an hour--you recollect--good evening."