The Market-Place | Page 9

and over," he
persisted, doggedly--"and I told you there'd be more where that came
from, and that I stood to pull off the great event--even then, now, you
didn't believe in your innermost heart that I knew what I was talking
about, did you?"
She frowned with impatience as she turned toward him. "For heaven's
sake, Joel," she said, sharply--"you become a bore with that stupid
nonsense. I want to be patient with you--I do indeed sympathize with
you in your misfortunes--you know that well enough--but you're very
tiresome with that eternal harping on what I believed and what I didn't
believe. Now, are you going to stop to supper or not?--because if you

are I must send the maid out. And there's another thing--would it be of
any help to you to bring your things here from the hotel? You can have
Alfred's room as well as not--till Christmas, at least."
"Supposing I couldn't get my luggage out of the hotel till I'd settled my
bill," suggested Thorpe tentatively, in a muffled voice.
The practical woman reflected for an instant. "I was thinking," she
confessed then, "that it might be cheaper to leave your things there, and
buy what little you want--I don't imagine, from what I've seen, that
your wardrobe is so very valuable--but no, I suppose the bill ought to
be paid. Perhaps it can be managed; how much will it be?"
Thorpe musingly rose to his feet, and strolled over to her chair. With
his thick hands on his sister's shoulders he stooped and kissed her on
the forehead.
"You believe in me now, anyway, eh, Lou?" he said, as he straightened
himself behind her.
The unaccustomed caress--so different in character from the
perfunctory salute with which he had greeted her on his arrival from
foreign parts, six months before-- brought a flush of pleased surprise to
her plain face. Then a kind of bewilderment crept into the abstracted
gaze she was bending upon the fireless grate. Something extraordinary,
unaccountable, was in the manner of her brother. She recalled that, in
truth, he was more than half a stranger to her. How could she tell what
wild, uncanny second nature had not grown up in him under those
outlandish tropical skies? He had just told her that his ruin was
absolute--overwhelming--yet there had been a covert smile in the
recesses of his glance. Even now, she half felt, half heard, a chuckle
from him, there as he stood behind her!
The swift thought that disaster had shaken his brain loomed up and
possessed her. She flung herself out of the chair, and, wheeling, seized
its back and drew it between them as she faced him. It was with a stare
of frank dismay that she beheld him grinning at her.

"What"--she began, stammering--"What is the matter, Joel?"
He permitted himself the luxury of smiling blankly at her for a further
moment. Then he tossed his head, and laughed abruptly.
"Sit down, old girl," he adjured her. "Try and hold yourself together,
now--to hear some different kind of news. I've been playing it rather
low down on you, for a fact. Instead of my being smashed, it's the other
way about."
She continued to confront him, with a nervous clasp upon the
chair-back. Her breathing troubled her as she regarded him, and tried to
take in the meaning of his words.
"Do you mean--you've been lying to me about--about your Company?"
she asked, confusedly.
"No--no--not at all," he replied, now all genial heartiness. "No--what I
told you was gospel truth--but I was taking a rise out of you all the
same." He seemed so unaffectedly pleased by his achievement in
kindly duplicity that she forced an awkward smile to her lips.
"I don't understand in the least," she said, striving to remember what he
had told her. "What you said was that the public had entirely failed to
come in--that there weren't enough applications for shares to pay
flotation expenses--those were your own words. Of course, I don't
pretend to understand these City matters--but it IS the case, isn't it, that
if people don't subscribe for the shares of a new company, then the
company is a failure?"
"Yes, that may be said to be the case--as a general rule," he nodded at
her, still beaming.
"Well, then--of course--I don't understand," she owned.
"I don't know as you'll understand it much more when I've explained it
to you," he said, seating himself, and motioning her to the other chair.
"But yes, of course you will. You're a business woman. You know what

figures mean. And really the whole thing is as simple as A B C. You
remember that I told you----"
"But are you going to stop to supper? I must send Annie out before the
shops close."
"Supper?