"Thank you," he rejoined, and he meant it. "What I was going to say touches a matter which I believe you haven't confided to any one. May I talk business for a few minutes?"
"If you will light your pipe and go on smoking. It makes me nervous to have people hang on the brink of things."
He lighted the pipe, wondering what other thing he might do to allay her nervousness. None the less, he would not go back from his purpose, which was barrier-building.
"I have thought, wholly without warrant, perhaps, that your loss in this railroad steal has had something to do with the postponement of your happiness—and Ormsby's. Has it?"
"And if it should have?"
"I merely wanted to say that we still have a fighting chance. But one of the hard and fast conditions is that every individual stockholder shall hang on to his or her holdings like grim death."
She caught her breath with a little gasp.
"The encouragement comes too late for us. We have parted with our stock."
Kent turned cold and hot and cold again while she was saying it. Then the lawyer in him came uppermost.
"Is it gone beyond recall? How much too late am I?" he demanded.