"So I am actually speaking to the editor of a London newspaper!" Sir John at last smiled kindly.
"Yes. Sparks is a rotten paper, but his making me editor of it is only a trick of the chiefs to find out what I am made of, so I don't mind. He's a sly old devil, long sighted and crafty, and he has, so to speak, laid me wide open and is now poking about in my in'ards to find out all about me." He laughed. "Lord, how the old man is sweating, trying to tire me out, and I get fresher and fresher! Oh, yes," he went on after another chuckle, "I am his latest Young Man and I have got better works than most of them and I am bound to succeed all right. So that's that." His mouth set, and he was silent for a moment, plainly looking into the future. "And by the time I am your age, Sir John," he said slowly, "I shall be what Fleet Street calls a 'Great Man.' I shall also be a multi-millionaire. Miss Minx will never starve."
"Yes, but you forget that she is still engaged to me."
Wick's eyes lost their far-off look.
"So she is," he admitted, "so she is. Guess I am going on a bit too fast. However," he went on with an air of conclusiveness, "she can't very well marry you if you don't want her, and you don't. So let's get on." He had rumpled his fine mouse-coloured hair, which stood up ludicrously, and he now tried to smooth it down, which made it more absurd than before.
Sir John watched him with a smile. "Well, now that we understand each other," the older man began, "suppose you tell me something else. I think I am not wrong in assuming that you—love Griselda?"
He had been half afraid to put the question, not that he doubted the gist of the reply, but that he shrank from a possible awkwardness or unbeautiful expression of it. He had been wrong.
Wick dropped his hands and turned to him his symmetrical face excited and bold looking, his eyes blooming with youth and love.
"Yes," he said with dignity, "I do. And——"
"You believe that her love for you is big enough to bring her to the point of—of—well—foregoing the thing for whose sake she accepted me?"