“What do you mean?” inquired Harry Vaux-Lowry.
“I mean that you and the minx have had the nearest possible shave of ruining your united careers. Listen to me. Give it up, my boy. I’ll try to arrange things. You delivered a letter to the father-in-law of your desire a few days ago. I’ll give you another one to deliver, and I fancy the result will be, different.”
The letter which Cecil wrote ran thus:—
“Dear Rainshore,—I enclose cheque for £100,000. It represents parts of the gold that can be picked up on the gold coast by putting out one’s hand—so! You will observe that it is dated the day after the next settling-day of the London Stock Exchange. I contracted on Monday last to sell you 25,000 shares of a certain Trust at 93⅜, I did not possess the shares then, but my agents have to-day bought them for me at an average price of 72. I stand to realise, therefore, rather more than half a million dollars. The round half-million Mr. Vaux-Lowry happens to bring you in his pocket; you will not forget your promise to him that when he did so you would consider his application favourably. I wish to make no profit out of the little transaction, but I will venture to keep the balance for out-of-pocket expenses, such as mending the Claribel’s shaft. (How convenient it is to have a yacht that will break down when required!) The shares will doubtless recover in due course, and I hope the reputation of the Trust may not suffer, and that for the sake of old times with my father you will regard the episode in its proper light and bear me no ill-will.—Yours sincerely,
“C. Thorold.”
The next day the engagement of Mr. Harry Nigel Selincourt Vaux-Lowry and Miss Geraldine Rainshore was announced to two continents.
CHAPTER III.
A BRACELET AT BRUGES.
The bracelet had fallen into the canal.
And the fact that the canal was the most picturesque canal in the old Flemish city of Bruges, and that the ripples caused by the splash of the bracelet had disturbed reflections of wondrous belfries, towers, steeples, and other unique examples of Gothic architecture, did nothing whatever to assuage the sudden agony of that disappearance. For the bracelet had been given to Kitty Sartorius by her grateful and lordly manager, Lionel Belmont (U.S.A.), upon the completion of the unexampled run of “The Delmonico Doll,” at the Regency Theatre, London. And its diamonds were worth five hundred pounds, to say nothing of the gold.