“Yes,” said she, with a quiet smile, “though, evidently, had I consulted Mr. Hankes, he would never have counselled the step.” After a moment, she resumed, “I have half a mind to tell you how it happened.”
“I pray you let me hear it.”
“Well, it was in this way: Shortly after that affair of the Ossory Bank,—the run for gold, I mean,—I received a few hurried lines from Mr. Dunn, urging me to greater exertion on the score of the Glengariff scheme, and calling upon me to answer certain newspaper insinuations against its solvency, and so forth. Before replying to these attacks, I was, of course, bound to read them; and, shall I confess it, such was the singular force of the arguments they employed, so reasonable did their inferences appear, and so terrible the consequences should the plan prove a failure, that I for the first time perceived that it was by no means impossible the vast superstructure we were raising might be actually on the brink of a volcano. I did not like exactly to tell Mr. Dunn these misgivings; in fact, though I attempted two or three letters to that effect, I could not, without great risk of offending, convey my meaning, and so I reflected and pondered over the matter several days, working my brain to find some extrication from the difficulty. At last, I bethought me of this: Mr. Dunn was my guardian; by his efforts was the small fragment of property that fell to me rescued and saved. What if I were to request him to invest the whole of it in this scheme? Were its solvency but certain, where could the employment of the money be safer or more profitable? If he consented, I might fairly suppose my fears were vain, and my misgivings unfounded. If, however, he showed any reluctance, even backwardness, to the project, the very phrase he might employ to dissuade me would have its especial significance, and I could at once have something to reason upon. Well, I wrote to him, and he answered by the next post: 'I fully coincide with your suggestion, and, acting on it, you are now the possessor of fifty-four shares in the allotment. As the moment for buying in is favorable, it is a thousand pities you could not make an equally profitable investment for your brother, whose twelve hundred pounds is yielding the very inglorious interest of the bank.'”
“And so you took the shares?” said Hankes, sighing; then added, “But let me see,—at what rate did you buy?”
“I am ashamed to confess, I forget; but I know the shares were high?”
“After the Ossory run,” muttered he,—“that was about September. Shares were then something like one hundred and twenty-seven and a quarter; higher afterwards; higher the whole month of November; shaky towards the end of the year; very shaky, indeed, in January. No, no,” said he to himself, “Dunn ought not to have done it.”
“I perceive,” said she, half smiling, “Mr. Hankes opines that the money had been better in the bank.”
“After all,” continued he, not heeding her remark, “Dunn could n't do anything else. You own, yourself, that if he had attempted to dissuade you, you would immediately have taken alarm; you 'd have said, 'This is all a sham. All these people will find themselves “let in” some fine morning;' and as Dunn could very readily make good your few hundred pounds, why, he was perfectly justified in the advice he gave.”
“Not when his counsel had the effect of influencing mine,” said she, quickly; “not when it served to make me a perfidious example to others. No, no, Mr. Hankes; if this scheme be not an honest and an upright one, I accept no partnership in its details.”
“I am only putting a case, remember,” said Hankes, hurriedly,—“a possible, but most improbable case. I am supposing that a scheme with the finest prospectus, the best list of directors, the most respectable referees in the empire, to be—what shall I say?—to be sickly,—yes, sickly,—in want of a little tonic treatment, generous diet, and so forth.”