Mrs. Maxwell's fingers curled a little more closely about the arms of her chair, and she nodded.
"Well, there are only two ways of doing that. There used to be three. There was a time when a man could accumulate a fortune by saving; but in this day and generation no accumulation of savings amounts to what we call a fortune. Nowadays a man can dig up a fortune; or he can so follow the daring of his imagination as to make a reality of what only existed, before, in his own ambitious dreams. I think it is safe to say that all but one per cent. of the great fortunes that are got together nowadays are done so by the exercising and ordering of a man's imagination. Well, I've made such use of mine that I'm a rich man, as far as money goes, at forty-three. Now my imagination is busy along new lines. Money is only the key: I want to enter the garden. I believe she'd realize every ideal I have! You are quite right. There's nobody like her!"
His face flushed deeply as he spoke, but Mrs. Maxwell was not looking at him. "Oh, dear," she sighed, "I do wish she were not quite so—odd!"
"Not odd," Flood contradicted, though pleasantly enough, "but supreme!"
Mrs. Maxwell's eyebrows went up. Ordinarily she was too conscious of what might be expected of her breeding to be disloyal to her sister; but Cecilia was not an angel.
"She is supremely full of notions," she remarked. "How any girl with her money can prefer—actually prefer—to dress as she does, and to live as she does, and to go about with one maid between us—I cannot understand it! She doesn't spend a thousand a year on her clothes, and she doesn't own so much as one motor car! You may call that sort of thing supreme; I call it odd!"
Pendleton had come out and joined Rosamund. They were obviously unaware of Flood's gaze, but Mrs. Maxwell rather disdainfully noticed that his look had softened as she spoke.
"Yes," he said, "that is unusual, as far as my experience goes; but I rather think she is quite capable of doing the unexpected. That's another part of her charm for me. I can only guess at what she would do or think, you know. And she's so far beyond me that while money is almost the whole show to me, it doesn't count at all, with her! Jove! I wish she might have the spending of mine!"
Mrs. Maxwell fairly shivered at the thought of Flood's millions going to waste, as she expressed it to herself; but fortunately for her peace of mind luncheon was announced, and they went into the little Dutch dining-room to investigate the cucumbers and cream.
At the table Rosamund lost some of her pensiveness; and when they came out again to the sight of the fields where the armies had fought and died, and were once more in the car, she bent towards Flood with eyes burning with excitement, lips parted and hands clasped.