“I got a letter from Colorado from the Wilkinses to-day. They’ve struck a gold mine that Tom Wilkins says is going to make them all rich if they can get the money to develop it. He offers to sell me a share on easy terms. He certainly has more assurance than anybody I ever knew.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” It was Bristow who spoke. “He was within his rights, you know, in that matter of the Orkney. Irrespective of his part in sinking the Orkney, Bill Wilkins saved that gold from the abandoned wreck, and thereby got a perfect title to about nine-tenths of it by the laws of pretty nearly every country in the world. Russia had no right to take it from him, and he would have had a good claim against her at the end if Tom Wilkins hadn’t wrecked and abandoned it again. That gave the second salvors their claim and wiped out his.”
Caruth growled. “He’d have had a hard time making good,” he observed. “Demidroff didn’t fish that gold up from the bottom of the gulf to surrender it to the Wilkinses.”
“Oh, no! I’m only discussing the legal rights of the matter, and Tom Wilkins’s part in it. If Bill Wilkins owned the gold—as he did—he had a right to take any partners in he liked. Oh, yes, the Wilkinses were within their legal rights all the time, though that isn’t exactly a recommendation for going in with them on a gold mine. There are too many legal robberies connected with that class of property to suit me.”
“I’m afraid there is too much law in this country,” chimed in Marie. “Just as there is too little in Russia. But what have you heard of the progress of the suit of the Princess Napraxine against Count Strogoff, Mr. Bristow?”
Bristow glanced quickly at his wife. “The Princess really seems about to win,” he declared, “though the case is still in the courts. Our man there writes me that he understands the Czar is convinced that the claim is valid, and has received the ‘Princess’ officially at his court. That means that everything’s over except the shouting. I don’t know; sometimes I wonder if I did right in letting Olga give up everything!”
But Olga smiled. “Not for me,” she declared, as she had declared in Baron Demidroff’s presence six months before. “Not for me. I told Baron Demidroff the truth. My tastes are simple, and I am quite content without the millions and the rank.”
“And in any event you are right.” It was Marie who spoke. “I have tested that mode of life, and I know. There is nothing in its glitter and pomp to balance home—home such as I never had and never could have had in Russia’s splendid barbarism. No, no, Mr. Bristow! If Olga had hesitated, it would have been your duty to tear her away from it by force. The world has nothing to offer that is better than America and American husbands.”
“Yes, you are quite right!” The Professor smiled benignantly on his two daughters. “You are quite right, both of you! Money and rank! What are they? Nothing! Nothing to freedom and the chance for a man to be a man! Besides,” he added shrewdly, “I suspect those estates will not be so very large after all. If Strogoff has not plundered them, he is not the man he is reputed to be.”
The bell at the door of the apartment rang, and a moment later a servant brought an evening paper to Caruth.