'Nothing from your point of view, but everything from mine,' he told her. 'There was a list of forty-two names of German-Americans, each giving a million dollars towards a specific purpose. There was a plan of a few remaining estates in a certain part of Brazil, still to be purchased to establish what at some seasonable juncture should be declared to be a German colony. Some slight trouble with the Government of Brazil, a German gunboat, and behold!—German South America and to Hell with the Monroe Doctrine! A very admirable scheme, only——'
'Only what?'
'I don't fancy that, thanks to you, those estates will ever come into the market,' he remarked dryly, 'not for a German purchaser, at any rate.'
She glanced uneasily towards the door.
'Mr. Lavendale,' she said earnestly 'I am terrified!'
'Why?'
'I am afraid of Mr. Kessner,' she confessed. 'He took it much too quietly.'
Lavendale shrugged his shoulders.
'A man of his temperament,' he said, 'seldom wastes his time or his emotions. He was playing for a great stake which he knows now that he will lose. At the same time, he has lost purely through accident.'
She suddenly smiled.