“Cora,” he said, “you don’t want it back.”
“Oh? Don’t I?”
“No.” He smiled faintly, and went on. “Now, all this nonsense of old Pryor’s isn’t worth denying. I have met him abroad; that much is true—and I suppose I have rather a gay reputation——”
She uttered a jeering shout.
“Wait!” he said. “I told you I’d cut quite a swathe, when I first talked to you about myself. Let it go for the present and come down to this question of Lindley’s investment——”
“Yes. That’s what I want you to come down to.”
“As soon as Lindley paid in his check I gave him his stock certificates, and cabled the money to be used at once in the development of the oil-fields——”
“What! That man told me you’d `promoted’ a South American rubber company once, among people of the American colony in Paris. The details he gave me sounded strangely familiar!”
“You’d as well be patient, Cora. Now, that money has probably been partially spent, by this time, on tools and labour and——”
“What are you trying to——”