He laughed boyishly.
"I'm robbed," he declared; "Held up and cleaned out in the house of my friends. I couldn't claim the stuff if I wanted to—without giving the whole snap away. But I don't mean to claim it. It is going to be put right where it will do the most good, Dick—which it wasn't going to be, if my romantic plot had worked out as it was planned. If Madeleine had found my money, I should never have been able to look her straight in the eyes again—never in this world. You know I shouldn't. That was the weak detail I told you about. But what she did find is her own, her very own, you see; and mine goes to the two kiddies. Billy's father couldn't stake him, neither now nor two or three years hence, when these two babies will take things into their own hands and get married, money or no money. And with another of her girls due to marry a poor man, Mrs. Van Tromp would be in despair."
"Another of her girls—you mean Beatrice?" I asked, dry-lipped.
"Sure thing. Jerry's a pauper; or if he isn't quite that now, he will be when Major Terwilliger's last will and testament is read."
"But Conetta!" I gasped. "He is promised to her, Bonteck."
"Is he?" he said; and that is all he did say.
"Isn't he?" I demanded.
"How should I know? You'd better go and ask him or her—or both of them."
For a flitting instant I found myself desperate enough to do that very thing; but I, too, had suffered my sea change. Curiously enough the hotheaded impulse died within me before I could rise from my seat on the three-legged stool.