Jasper took the prospectus. “They don’t exaggerate much; their stuff is good. The ordinary shares ought to be a sound investment; but I didn’t know you speculated. Sometimes when a young man wants money it is because he thinks about marriage. You, however, declared you did not.”
Ledward hesitated. Jasper had met him and Evelyn at Hadriansford, and Kit was Evelyn’s lover. Moreover, he was Jasper’s nephew, but Ledward had not thought the old fellow annoyed.
“Until recently, for me to think about marrying would have been ridiculous,” he said. “Now, perhaps, I would not be very rash. Your generosity would justify the plunge.”
“I wonder,” Jasper remarked, and gave Ledward a baffling smile. “I doubt if I am generous, Harry; I try to be just. Well, if the lady were not extravagant, you could support a wife.”
The others crossed the grass, and Ledward wondered whether Jasper had noted Evelyn’s arrival. His remark about his being just was puzzling and somehow ominous. Ledward felt he had got a hint, but he did not see where the other led. By and by Jasper let him go, and Alan Carson came up the steps.
“You were engaged with Harry, and I waited,” he said. “We hoped Sir Antony’s report might be encouraging, but you did not tell us much, and I thought you were disappointed. Did he not give you some notion about when you might get up?”
“He doesn’t know,” Jasper replied in a quiet voice.
Alan’s look was disturbed, and Jasper knew his emotion sincere.
“After all,” he resumed, “I’m getting old, and since, for the most part, I’ve gone where I wanted to go, when I’m forced to stop I mustn’t grumble.”
“Your pluck’s good,” said Alan. “But you made the forge famous, and to give up control and perhaps see others let down the business would hurt.”