He suddenly sat down at the table, putting his elbows on it and his face in his hands, with a harried effect of wanting to think it over in a sort of withdrawal from his immediate surroundings. This was as it should be. His Yankee readiness had deserted him altogether.
“By Jove! you are nervous!” Palliser commented. “It's not surprising, though. I can sympathize with you.” With a markedly casual air he himself sat down and drew his documents toward him. “Let us talk of something else,” he said. He preferred to be casual and incidental, if he were allowed. It was always better to suggest things and let them sink in until people saw the advantage of considering them and you. To manage a business matter without open argument or too frank a display of weapons was at once more comfortable and in better taste.
“You are making a great mistake in not going into this,” he suggested amiably. “You could go in now as you went into Hutchinson's affair, `on the ground floor.' That's a good enough phrase, too. Twenty thousand pounds would make you a million. You Americans understand nothing less than millions.”
But T. Tembarom did not take him up. He muttered in a worried way from behind his shading hands, “We'll talk about that later.”
“Why not talk about it now, before anything can interfere?” Palliser persisted politely, almost gently.
Tembarom sprang up, restless and excited. He had plainly been planning fast in his temporary seclusion.
“I'm thinking of what you said about Lady Joan,” he burst forth. “Say, she's gone through all this Jem Temple Barholm thing once; it about half killed her. If any one raised false hopes for her, she'd go through it all again. Once is enough for any woman.”
His effect at professing heat and strong feeling made a spark of amusement show itself in Palliser's eye. It struck him as being peculiarly American in its affectation of sentiment and chivalry.
“I see,” he said. “It's Lady Joan you're disturbed about. You want to spare her another shock, I see. You are a considerate fellow, as well as a man of business.”
“I don't want her to begin to hope if—”