“He was that until very recently; but he has turned over a new leaf. He has forsworn his old and, I suppose, rather disreputable companions. I find him rather serious.”
“What has changed him?” Ashton Welles was foolish enough to be brave enough to ask. When a question can have two answers—one of them disagreeable—it is folly to ask it.
“I don't know,” answered Jerningham, as if puzzled. “He has acted a little queerly and secretive-like; but it is, I admit, a queerness that other young men would do well to imitate, for it has made him cease drinking, and cease—er—you know. I rather suspect it is his sister, Mrs. Burt. He is very fond of her. A man will do things for a good woman that he won't for his best man friend, or for his own sake. You saw him. There is no viciousness or dissipation in that face. Damned handsome chap, I call him!”
“H'm!” winced the glacial Ashton Welles. He could not help it.
There came upon him a strange mood, almost of numbness, that made him silent against his will. He answered by nods—the nods of a man who does not hear—to Jerningham's chatter. He gathered in some way that the Alaskan Monte Cristo was talking of buying VanTwiller Trust Company stock, and that he would ask Stewardson how much he could borrow on the stock.
“Yes—do!” said Ashton Welles as the motor stopped in front of the imposing entrance of the trust company's marble building.
They stepped out; Welles excused himself almost brusquely and went into his own private office to think all the thoughts that a millionaire of fifty-two thinks when he thinks that he married at fifty a girl thirty years his junior, with cheeks like flower petals and eyes like skies, who is going to spend the best part of a week on a steamer in the company of a man who is much worse than handsome—young!
Mr. Jerningham, who did not seem to have noticed the near rudeness of Mr. Ashton Welles, promptly sought the second vice-president and asked how much the company would lend on its own stock.
“It is against the law for us to lend money on our own stock,” said the vice-president, who did not add that this provision had prevented many an inside clique from eating its pie and having it too.
“Will the banks loan money on V.T. stock?” asked Jerningham. He had already bought three thousand shares at an average of four hundred dollars a share.