"And the money is mine."
James went away with a check for a thousand pounds in his pocket; but he went away less cheerful than he arrived. John, on the other hand, was much impressed by the manner in which he had dealt with his eldest brother; it was worth while losing a thousand pounds to have been able to demonstrate clearly to James once for all that his taste in literature was at the mercy of the romanticism he so utterly despised. And while he felt that he had displayed a nice dignity in forcing James to surrender the portraits and the silver, he was also pleasantly aware of an equally nice magnanimity in being willing to overlook that insulting article. But Miss Hamilton was at his elbow to correct the slightest tendency to be too well pleased with himself.
"After all I couldn't disappoint poor old James," he said, fishing for an encomium and dangling his own good heart as the bait. His secretary, however, ignored the tempting morsel and swam away into the deeps of romantic drama where his munificence seemed less showy somehow.
"You know best what you want to do," she said, curtly. "And now, have you decided upon this soliloquy for Joan in her dungeon?"
"What do you feel about it?"
She held forth upon the advantages of a quiet front scene before the trial, and the author took her advice. He wished that she were as willing to discant upon his treatment of James, but he consoled himself for her lack of interest by supposing that she was diffident about giving the least color to any suggestion that she might be influencing him to her own advantage.
Hugh came up to town in order to go more fully into the question of his future, and John regarding Miss Hamilton's attitude towards him tried to feel perfectly sure that she was going out of her way to be pleasant to Hugh solely with an idea of accentuating the strictly professional side of her association with himself. If this were not the case, he should be justified in thinking that she did really like Hugh very much, which would be an uncomfortable state of affairs. Still, explain it away as he might, John did feel a little uneasy, and once when he heard of a visit to the theater preceded by dinner he was upon the verge of pointing out to Hugh that until he was definitely established in mahogany and logwood he must be extremely careful about raising false hopes. He managed to refrain from approaching Hugh on the subject, because he knew that if he betrayed the least anxiety in that direction Hugh was capable of making it a matter of public jest. He decided instead to sound Miss Hamilton upon her views.
"You've never had any longing for the tropics?" he asked, as casually as he was able.
"Not particularly, though of course I should enjoy any fresh experience."
"I was noticing the other day that you seemed to dislike spiders; and, of course, the spiders in hot countries are terrible. I remember reading of some that snare birds, and I'm not sure that in parts of South America they don't even attack human beings. Many people of course do not mind them. For instance, my brother-in-law Daniel Curtis wrote a very moving account of a spider as large as a bat, with whom he fraternized on the banks of the Orinoco. It's quite a little classic in its way."