“Yes, to business,” said Spenser Churchill unctuously. “I dare say, my dear Percy, you think I have earned that ten thousand pounds very easily—by the way, it ought to have been twenty, it ought, indeed!” and he shook his head solemnly.
“I’d as soon pay you twenty as ten,” said Percy Levant, carelessly.
“You would? Give me your hand, my dear boy!” exclaimed Spenser Churchill, with blind enthusiasm. “You are just what I always thought you—a noble youth, a truly noble and unselfish young man! You would just as soon give me twenty!”
“Yes, or thirty! I’m as unselfish as you are,” said Percy.
Spenser Churchill’s emotion was so great at this fresh proof of his dear young friend’s unselfish generosity that he was constrained to turn his head aside and wipe his eyes.
“You are an honorable, a noble young man, my dear boy!” he murmured. “And now I will lay the whole story before you. But, as I said, don’t think I have not earned the money! My dear Percy, are you aware that your wife was once engaged to Lord Cecil Neville, the marquis’ nephew, the heir to the title? Eh?” and he chuckled.
“Really!”
“Yes, yes! Oh, it’s true, and I assure you that they would have made a marriage of it but for me. Oh, don’t look so surprised. Bless my soul, if I am not a match for a simple and confiding couple like those, why——” He raised his hand. “But it was a troublesome affair, my dear Percy, and cost me a deal of thought. And ra—ther risky, too!” he added, thoughtfully. “Forged letters—ahem!—that is fictitious correspondence, though rendered inevitable by the circumstances of the case, is dangerous.”
“I see,” said Percy Levant, distinctly. “You forged letters from Lord Cecil Neville to Miss Marlowe——”
“Yes. But, quietly, my dear Percy. Bless my soul, you and I don’t want to publish our little mutual confidences on the housetops; and—er—this room is rather, I say, rather, public, isn’t it? What’s behind those curtains? Good gracious!” and he half rose.