Mr. Bayard stated that he would send word to the old gray buccaneer, fixing June second for the settlement and accepting the pool's offer of seven millions.
"And when the day arrives," observed Mr. Bayard, "I'll carry out your financial forgiveness of Senator Hanway and Mr. Harley."
"Not forgetting to hide my name?"
"Not forgetting to hide your name. But Inspector Val and Mr. Sands will have to know."
"It will make the less difference; by that time I'll be three hundred miles off-shore."
"And having," said Mr. Bayard, "so pleasantly adjusted our business, suppose we smoke in confirmation of the adjustment. Also, if you will, please explain the humbug of Mr. Gywnn. Why are you, who are among the world's five wealthiest men, so anxious to pretend poverty and hide your money-light beneath a bushel?"
"Mr. Gwynn is no humbug," returned Richard; "under my thumb, he acts for me in business. I am saved a deal of bother at slight expense and slighter risk. Now and then, of course, I find him absorbing some sly hundreds. When he bought the Daily Tory, he substituted a pretended agent between himself and Talon & Trehawke, and in that way sequestered over eleven thousand dollars behind the mask of commissions. But I always discover and rectify these discrepancies. And I forgive them, too; for Mr. Gwynn was educated to a theory of perquisites, and such little lapses as those Daily Tory commissions are but the outcrop of old habits too deeply rooted to be eradicated."
"But you present him as your patron—as the head of your house."
"There you're in the wrong," laughed Richard. "When I returned from Europe bringing Mr. Gwynn, society seized upon him for its own. Society went wild over Mr. Gwynn; it discovered in him treasures of patricianism and a well-bred elegance. Since society insisted upon the enthronement of Mr. Gwynn, it would have been impolite, nay narrow, on my part to object. Besides, I recognized in it the essence of democracy and as an American rejoiced. 'By all means,' said I, 'society shall have its excellent way. I can give it little, but I can give it Mr. Gwynn.'"
Richard's old cynicism was for the moment restored, and the laughing philosopher—who is only a laughing hyena in trousers and cutaway—shone out in all a former Abderitish glory. In the brittle case of Mr. Bayard the laughing cynic did not laugh alone; that gray eagle of the tape saw much in Mr. Gwynn and his polite adventures to delight him. He declared the situation to be a most justifiable sarcasm addressed, not against an individual, but an age.