"I'd like to see him try," that young man growled, with unexpected fierceness.
"Well, his name is John Philip Wingate," Kendrick told them. "He started life, I believe, as a journalist. Then he inherited a fortune and made another one on Wall Street, where I imagine he came across Dreadnought Phipps. What happened I don't exactly know," he went on ruminatively. "Phipps couldn't have squeezed him, or we should have heard about it, but somehow or other the two got at loggerheads, for it's common knowledge amongst their business connections—I don't know that they have any friends—that Wingate has sworn to break Phipps. There will be quite a commotion in the City when it gets about that Wingate is here or on his way over."
"It's almost like a romance," Sarah declared, as she took the ice which her cavalier had brought her and settled down once more in her chair. "Tell me more about Mr. Wingate, please. Mr. Phipps I know, of course, and he doesn't seem in the least terrifying. Is Mr. Wingate like that or is he a dourer type?"
"John Wingate," Kendrick said reflectively, "is a much younger man than Phipps—-I should say that he wasn't more than thirty-five—and much better-looking. I must say that in a struggle I shouldn't know which to back. Wingate has sentiment and Phipps has none; conscience of which Phipps hasn't a shred, and a sense of honour with which Phipps was certainly never troubled. These points are all against him in a market duel, but on the other hand he has a bigger outlook than Phipps, he has nerves of steel and the grit of a hero. Did I tell you, by the by, that he went into the war as a private and came out a brigadier?"
"Splendid!" Sarah murmured. "Now tell us where Peter Phipps comes in?"
"Well," Kendrick continued, "Phipps attracts sympathy because of his lavish hospitality and apparent generosity, whilst Wingate is a man of many reserves and has few friends, either on this side or the other. Then Phipps, I should say, is the wealthier man, and in this present deal, at any rate, he has marvellous support, so that financially he must tower over Wingate. Then, too, I think he understands the tricks of the market better over here, and he has a very dangerous confederate in Skinflint Martin. What that old blackguard doesn't know of chicanery and crooked dealing, the devil himself couldn't make use of. If he's put his own money into B. & I., I should say that Phipps can't be broken. My advice to Wingate, at any rate, when we meet, will be to stand by for a time."
The sound of approaching voices warned them that their seclusion was on the point of being broken into. Their hostess, an elderly lady of great social gifts and immense volubility, appeared, having for her escort a tall, well-groomed man of youthful middle-age, with the square jaw and humorous gleam in his grey eyes of the best trans-Atlantic type. Lady Amesbury beamed upon them all.
"Just the people I was looking for!" she exclaimed. "I want you all to know my great friend, Mr. Wingate from New York."
Every one was glad to meet Wingate, and Kendrick and he exchanged the greetings of old friends.
"Now you have found some one whom you can talk to, my dear John," his hostess declared. "I shall consider you off my hands for the afternoon. Come and dine with me next Sunday night, and don't lose your heart to Sarah Baldwin. She's a capricious little minx, and, besides, she's engaged to Jimmy there, though heaven knows whether they'll ever get married.—There! I knew it! My own particular Bishop being lured into conversation with Hilda Sutton, who's just become a freethinker and can't talk of anything else. It will spoil the dear man's afternoon if she gets really started.—Good-by, all of you. Take care of Mr. Wingate."