The doctor nodded indulgently. “We can venture to change that state of affairs, but I’ll superintend the operation.”
It was some time before Vane’s toilet was completed, and then Carroll surveyed him with humorous admiration.
“You do us credit, and now I suppose I can announce that you’ll receive?” he said.
Nairn and his wife and Evelyn came in, and the former, who shook hands with Vane very heartily, afterwards looked down at him with twinkling eyes.
“I’d have been glad to see ye, however ye had come,” he said, and Vane fully believed him. “For a’ that, this is no the way I could have wished to welcome ye.”
“When a man won’t take his friends’ advice, what can he expect?” said Vane.
“Let it be a warning. If the making of your mark and dollars is your object, ye must stick to it and think of nothing else. Ye cannot accumulate riches by spreading yourself, and philanthropy’s no lucrative, except maybe to a few.”
“It’s good counsel, but I’m thinking that’s a pity,” his wife remarked. “What would ye say, Evelyn?”
The girl was aware that the tone of light banter had been adopted to cover deeper feelings, which those present shrank from expressing; but she ventured to give her thoughts free rein.
“I agree with you in one respect,” she said. “But I can’t believe that the object mentioned is Mr. Vane’s only one. He would never be willing to pay the necessary price.”