“It seems odd enough to me, Fossy, to hear you talk of your suspicions! How hardly the world must have gone with you since we met to inflict you with suspicions! You never had one long ago.”
“And shall I tell you how I came by them, Wilmington?” said he, laughing. “I have grown rich again,—there 's the whole secret. There's no such corrupter as affluence. My mine has turned out a perfect Potosi, and here am I ready to think every man a knave and a rascal, and the whole world in a conspiracy to cheat me!”
“And is this fact about the mine?—tell me all about it.”
And Fossbrooke now related the story of his good fortune, dwelling passingly on the days of hardship that preceded it; but frankly avowing that it was a consummation of which he never for a moment doubted. “I knew it,” said he; “and I was not impatient. The world is always an amusing drama, and though one may not be 'cast' for a high part, he can still 'come on' occasionally, and at all events he can enjoy the performance.”
“And is this fortune to go like the others, Fossy?” said the Viceroy, laughing.
“Have I not told you how much wiser I have grown, that I trust no one? I 'm not sure that I 'll not set up as a moneylender.”
“So you were forty years ago, Fossy, to my own knowledge; but I don't suspect you found it very profitable.”
“Have I not had my fifty—ay, my five hundred—per cent in my racy enjoyment of life? One cannot be paid in meal and malt too; and I have 'commuted,' as they call it, and 'taken out' in cordiality what others prefer in cash. I do not believe there is a corner of the globe where I could not find some one to give me a cordial welcome.”
“And what are your plans?”
“I have fully a thousand; my first, however, is to purchase that place on the Shannon, where, if you remember, we met once,—the Swan's Nest. I want to settle my friends the Lendricks in their old home. I shall have to build myself a crib near them. But before I turn squatter I 'll have a run over to Canada. I have a large tract there near Huron, and they have built a village on me, and now are asking me for a church and a schoolhouse and an hospital. It was but a week ago they might as well have asked me for the moon! I must see Ceylon too, and my coffee-fields. I am dying to be 'bon Prince' again and lower my rents. 'There's arrant snobbery,' some one told me t' other day, 'in that same love of popularity;' but they 'll have to give it even a worse name before they disgust me with it. I shall have to visit Cagliari also, and relieve Tom Lendrick, who would like, I have no doubt, to take that 'three months in Paris' which young fellows call 'going over to see their friends.'”