"I have come back and come for good," he began. "Yes, I have come back to take all the blue ribbons at ranching," he added, with a touch of garden nonsense that came like a second thought to soften the abruptness of his announcement.
"For good! For good! You!" The Doge stared at Jack in incomprehension.
"Yes, my future is out here, now."
"You give up the store—the millions—your inheritance!" cried the Doge, still amazed and sceptical as he sounded the preposterousness of this idea to worldly credulity.
"Quite!"
There was no mistaking the firmness of the word. "To make your fortune, your life, out here?"
The Doge's voice was throbbing with the wonder of the thing.
"Yes!"
"Why? Why? I feel that I have a right to ask why!" demanded the Doge, in all the majesty of the moment when he faced John Wingfield, Sr. in the drawing-room.
"Because of a lie and what it concealed. Because of reasons that may not be so vague to you as they are to me."