Mrs. Laniston looked bewildered. "But isn't this rather early to go so far south? The danger from yellow fever is by no means counteracted by these light frosts in the upper country."
The gentleman who had connections in Glaston surveyed her in surprise. "Why, there has never been a case of yellow fever to originate near Glaston—they feel no apprehension whatever."
"Mr. Lloyd's home-place is within a few miles of Glaston," Mr. Dalton explained.
In common with most talkative women Mrs. Laniston could not silently await developments. "Oh—I thought his home was near us—in Louisiana—beyond the bight of the bayou."
"That——" said Mr. Dalton, with undisguised disregard, "why I understand that that plantation has only a little house on it—a neglected place, too. I think that Mr. Jennico only took it for a debt."
"Mr. Lloyd's home-place, the old Jennico place, near Glaston, is one of the finest country seats in the whole South," the gentleman who knew Glaston said, with almost local pride. "It is positively baronial. I should think, Mr. Lloyd, that you would be very happy to own it."
Lloyd smiled, his eyes on the fire. "I saw it only once," he said.
"Yes—yes——" exclaimed Mr. Dalton delightedly, "the time you called on your grandfather, Judge Lloyd, when he was visiting there. Ah ha! you took no notice whatever of the plump little gentleman reading the paper in his easy chair in the bay-window—and listening to every word. Charles Jennico always had more curiosity than any woman! He had intended to leave all his property to the eldest grandson of his friend and cousin, Judge Lloyd—this Thomas Jennico Lloyd. 'But by George, I made up my mind then that I'd divide my estate evenly between the two grandsons,' he told me when he gave me his instructions to draw up his will. He said, 'I wouldn't do anything then; I wouldn't interfere with the young cock's independence—I honoured him for it. But I never saw anybody who would grace wealth better and I made up my mind that he shouldn't eat the bread of carefulness all his days.' And that's how our young friend came to be the residuary legatee and devisee."
The priggish gentleman, who was of the type who grudges a fellow-creature nothing so much as self-satisfaction, remarked with sour emphasis: "Your Street Fair colleagues, Mr. Lloyd, will have marvellously little trouble in advertising themselves with your accession to fortune. The newspapers are beforehand with them already. You are spread all over the New York papers,"—and he turned a sheet trembling and crackling in his hand as he unfolded it, and read the following flaring headline:
"A Windfall. From Mountebank to Millionaire."