"I could not be better pleased with the reception the market has given to the Carmel group," said Alington. "I see you have followed my advice, my dear Conybeare, and invested largely in the East and West Company."
Jack was lounging in a long chair in the smoking-room. The morning was hopelessly wet, and violent scudding rain beat tattooes on the windows, and scourged its glory from the garden.
"Yes, I have paid ten thousand half-crowns twice," he said. "Even half-crowns mount up, and I used to think nothing of them. I have followed your advice to the letter, and I can no more pay the special settlement than I can fly."
"You were quite right," said Alington. "I assure you there will not be the slightest need for that. By the way, the Stock Exchange have given us the special settlement at the mid-October account. Dear me! what an opportunity poor Lord Abbotsworthy has missed! He would not take my advice. Even now the shares are at a slight premium. You have invested, in fact, the larger half of your first year's salary."
"Exactly. By the way, I don't want my salary to be printed very large in the balance-sheet. Put it in a sequestered corner and periphrase it, will you? People won't like it, you know, and the whole concern will be discredited; they are so prejudiced."
"That also need not trouble you," said Alington. "In fact, I have paid your salary myself. It does not appear at all in the balance-sheet."
Lord Conybeare frowned.
"Do you mean you pay me five thousand pounds a year out of your own purse?"
"Certainly. Your services to me are worth that, and I pay it most willingly, which the shareholders undoubtedly would not do. Indeed, my dear Conybeare, the benefit that your name and Lord Abbotsworthy's—yours particularly—have done me is immense. The British public is so aristocratic at heart and at purse; and unless I am some day bankrupt, which I assure you is not in the least likely, no one will ever know about your—your remuneration."
"I don't know that I altogether like that," said Jack in what Kit called his "scruple voice," which always irritated her exceedingly.