Tony Cornish nodded in his quick, sympathetic way. Mr. Wade had told him none of this before, but it was to be presumed that he had heard at least part of it from other sources. His manner now indicated that he was interested, but he did not ask his companion to say one word more than he felt disposed to utter. It is probable that he knew these to be no idle after-dinner words, spoken without premeditation, out of a full heart; for Mr. Wade was not, as he had boasted, a person of sentiment, but a plain, straightforward business man, who, if he had no meaning to convey, said nothing. And in this respect it is a pity that more are not like him.

"We have always been pretty good friends, you and I," continued the banker, "though I know I am not exactly your sort. I am distinctly City; you are as distinctly West End. But during your minority, and when we settled up accounts on your coming of age, and since then, we have always. .h.i.t it off pretty well."

"Yes," said Cornish, moving his feet impatiently under the table.

There was no mistaking the aim of all this, and Mr. Wade was too British in his habits to beat about the bush much longer.

"I do not mind telling you that I have got you down in my will," said the banker.

Cornish bit his lip and frowned at his wine-gla.s.s. And it is possible that the man of no sentiment understood his silence.

"I have frequently disbelieved what I have heard of you," went on the elder man. "You have, doubtless, enemies--as all men have--and you have been a trifle reckless, perhaps, of what the world might say. If you will allow me to say so, I think none the worse of you for that."

Mr. Wade pushed the decanter across the table, and when Cornish had filled his gla.s.s, drew it back towards himself. It is wonderful what resource there is in half a gla.s.s of wine, if merely to examine it when it is hard to look elsewhere.

"You remember, six months ago, I spoke to you of a personal matter,"

said the banker. "I asked you if you had thoughts of marrying, and suggested something in the nature of a partnership if that would facilitate your plans in any way."

"That is not the sort of offer one is likely to forget," answered Cornish.

"I asked you if--well, if it was Joan Ferriby."

"Yes. And I answered that it was not Joan Ferriby. That was mere gossip, of which we are both aware, and for which neither of us cares a pin."

"Then it comes to this," said Mr. Wade, drawing lines on the tablecloth with his dessert knife as if it were a balance-sheet, and he was casting the final totals there. "You are a man of the world; you are clever; you are like your father before you, in that you have something that women care about. Heaven only knows what it is, for I don't!" He paused, and looked at his companion as if seeking that intangible something. Then he jerked his head towards the drawing-room, where Marguerite could be dimly heard playing an air from the latest comic opera with a fine contempt for accidentals. "That child," he said, "knows no more about life than a sparrow. A man like myself--seventeen stone--may have to balance his books at any moment. You have a clear field; for you may take my word for it that you will be the first in it. My own experience of life has been mostly financial, but I am pretty certain that the first man a woman cares for is the man she cares for all along, though she may never see him again. I don't hold it out as an inducement, but there is no reason why you should not know that she will have a hundred and fifty thousand pounds--not when I am dead, but on the day she marries." Mr. Wade paused, and took a sip of his most excellent port. "Do not hurry," he said. "Take your time.

Think about it carefully--unless you have already thought about it, and can say yes or no now."

"I can do that."

Mr. Wade bent forward heavily, with one arm on the table.

"Ah!" he said. "Which is it?"

"It is no," answered Cornish, simply. The banker pa.s.sed his table-napkin across his lips, paused for a moment, and then rose with, as was his hospitable custom, his hand upon the sherry decanter. "Then let us go into the drawing-room," he said.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE MAKING OF A MAN.

"Heureux celui qui n'est forcee de sacrifier personne a son devoir."

"You know," said Marguerite the next morning, as she and Cornish rode quietly along the sandy roads, beneath the shade of the pines--"you know, papa is such a jolly, simple old dear--he doesn't understand women in the least."

"And do you call yourself a woman nowadays?" inquired Cornish.

"You bet. Bet those grey hairs of yours if you like.

I see them! All down one side."

"They are all down both sides and on the top as well--my good--woman.

How does your father fail to understand you?"

"Well, to begin with, he thinks it necessary to have Miss Williams, to housekeep and chaperon, and to do oddments generally--as if I couldn't run the show myself. You haven't seen Miss Williams--oh, crikey!

She has gone to Cheltenham for a holiday, for which you may thank your eternal stars. She is just the sort of person who _would_ go to Cheltenham. Then papa is desperately keen about my marrying. He keeps trotting likely _partis_ down here to dine and sleep--that's why you are here, I haven't a shadow of a doubt. None of the _partis_ have pa.s.sed muster yet. Poor old thing, he thinks I do not see through his little schemes."

Cornish laughed, and glanced at Marguerite under the shade of his straw hat, wondering, as men have probably wondered since the ages began, how it is that women seem to begin life with as great a knowledge of the world as we manage to acquire towards the end of our experience.

Marguerite made her statements with a certain careless _aplomb_, and these were usually within measurable distance of the fact, whereas a youth her age and ten years older, if he be of a didactic turn, will hold forth upon life and human nature with an ignorance of both which is positively appalling.

"Now, I don't want to marry," said Marguerite, suddenly returning to her younger and more earnest manner. "What is the good of marrying?"

"What, indeed," echoed Cornish.

"Well, then, if papa tackles you--about me, I mean--when he has done the _Times_--he won't say anything before, the _Times_ being the first object in papa's existence, and yours very truly the second--just you choke him off--won't you?"

"I will."

"Promise?"

"Promise faithfully."

"That's all right. Now tell me--is my hat on one side?"

Cornish a.s.sured her that her hat was straight, and then they talked of other things, until they came to a ditch suitable for some jumping lessons, which he had promised to give her.

She was bewilderingly changeable, at one moment childlike, and in the next very wise--now a heedless girl, and a moment later a keen woman of the world--appearing to know more of that abode of evil than she well could. Her colour came and went--her very eyes seemed to change.

Cornish thought of this open field which Marguerite's father had offered, and perhaps he thought of the hundred and fifty thousand pounds that lay beneath so bright a surface.

On returning to "The Brambles," they found Mr. Wade reading the _Times_ in the gla.s.s-covered veranda of that eligible suburban mansion. It being a Sat.u.r.day, the great banker was taking a holiday, and Cornish had arranged not to return to town until midday.

"Come here," shouted Mr. Wade, "and have a cigar while you read the paper."

"And remember," added Marguerite, slim and girlish in her riding-habit; "choke him off!"

She stood on the door-step, looking over her shoulder, and nodded at Cornish, her fresh lips tilted at the corner by a smile full of gaiety and mysticism.

"Read that," said Mr. Wade, gravely.

But Mr. Wade was always grave--was clad in gravity and a frock-coat all his waking moments--and Cornish took up the newspaper carelessly. He stretched out his legs and lighted a cigar. Then he leisurely turned to the column indicated by his companion. It was headed, "Crisis in the Paper Trade: the Malgamite Corner."

And Tony Cornish did not raise his eyes from the printed sheet for a full ten minutes. When at length he looked up, he found Mr. Wade watching him, placid and patient.

"Can't make head or tail of it," he said, with a laugh.