"I'm not feeling well," he said simply; "when the young people have finished with you, Forrest, you will find me in the Signer's room." He left the table and the room, very pale and shaky, for by this time the full meaning of Forrest's incontestable claim had clarified in his brain. He saw himself as if struck down by sudden poverty—of too long leisure and too advanced Forrest finished as abruptly as he had begun and rose from the piano. But for a few charged moments even the twins were silent.
"He used to sing that song," said Forrest, "so that the cold chills went galloping the length of a man's spine. He was as like you to look at," he turned to the earl, "as one star is like another. I cannot tell you how it has moved me to meet you. We were in a place called Grub Gulch, placer-mining—half a dozen of us. I came down with the scarlet fever. The others bolted, all but Charlie Stuart. He stayed. But by the time I was up, thanks to him, he was down—thanks to me. He died of it." Forrest finished very gravely.
"Good Lord!" said the earl.
"He might ha' been a king," said Forrest. And he swallowed the lump that rose in his throat, and turned away so that his face could not be seen by them.
But, presently, he flashed about with his winning smile.
"What, would all you rich young people do if you hadn't a sou in the world?"
"Good Lord!" said Stephen, "everything I know how to do decently costs money."
"I feel sure," said Alice, her arm about Evelyn's waist, "that our beauty and goodness would see us through."
"I," said Ellen, "would quietly curl up and die."
"I," said Dorothy, "would sell my earl to the highest bidder."