Sir Matthew sighed heavily.
“It’s mostly for her sake that I care to escape to-night,” he said with a touch of real feeling in his manner. “She will always be grateful to you, Ralph, for helping me.”
“I will order them to bring you some dinner at eight,” said Ralph, “and if you like I can drive down to the docks with you at eleven or a little after.”
Sir Matthew caught at this suggestion, and Ralph having finished his work at the theatre, refused two or three invitations to supper and hurried back to wind up the most curious service he had yet been called upon to render to any man.
“Don’t think too harshly of me,” said Sir Matthew as they drove down to the starting-place of the Havre steamer. “Remember that I always expected the speculation to succeed, that I still think I could have recovered myself if only things had not all conspired against me at the same time. You Denmeads can’t understand the temptations that assail an average man in the city. You were born without the love of money in you, and whatever happens you are always strictly honourable. Some men are made so. Had I not felt implicit trust in you how should I dare have put myself now in your power? You own that you would like to see me arrested and punished, but I know that you won’t betray me for all that.”
“I don’t wish to see you punished now,” said Ralph, “and of course I can’t betray you. But perhaps the best way after all would be for you to give yourself up to justice.”
Sir Matthew broke into a laugh.
“You might be your father sitting there and talking! It’s exactly what he would have said. My dear fellow your ideals are above me, and they are about as little likely to be adopted by ordinary men of the world as the ideals in Plato’s republic. I shall certainly not give myself up. I shall instead try my very best, for the sake of others, to recoup my losses and to start afresh.”
A curiously sanguine look crept over his worn face, and Ralph felt certain that like a gambler he would return as soon as possible to his great game of speculation, very likely persuading himself, with the ease of one who has posed hypocritically for many years, that he did it all from the purest philanthropic motives.
“You had better not come on board with me,” he said as they drew near to the docks. “And on the whole perhaps I had better not take this tartan with me, it is too marked. I will bequeath it to you. Good-bye Ralph. Many thanks to you for what you have done for me.”