“I wonder why?” said the young lady, sharply and rather angrily.
Joan shrugged her shoulders and laughed. She sometimes wondered why herself, but Tony had never satisfied her curiosity. The young lady moved away and talked to others of the same matter. There were quite a number of people in the room who wanted to know why Tony Cornish did not speak, and wished he would. The way to rule the world is to make it want something, and keep it wanting.
“I make so bold as to hope,” Lord Ferriby was saying, “that when sufficient publicity has been given to our scheme we shall be able to raise the necessary funds. In the fulness of this hope, I have ventured to jot down the names of certain gentlemen who have been kind enough to assume the trusteeship. I propose, therefore, that the trustees of the Malgamite Fund shall be—er—myself——”
Like a practiced speaker, Lord Ferriby paused for the applause which duly followed. And certain elderly gentlemen, who had been young when Marmaduke Ferriby was young, looked with much interest at the pictures on the wall. That Lord Ferriby should assume the directorship of a great charity was to send that charity on its way rejoicing. He stood smiling benevolently and condescendingly down upon the faces turned towards him, and rejoiced inwardly over these glorious obsequies of a wild and deplorable past.
“Mr. Anthony Cornish,” he read out, and applause made itself heard again.
“Major White.”
And the listeners turned round and stared at that hero, whom they discovered calmly and stolidly entrenched behind the eye-glass, his broad, tanned face surmounting a shirt front of abnormal width.
“Herr von Holzen.”
No one seemed to know Herr von Holzen, or to care much whether he existed or not.
“And—my—er—friend—the originator of this great scheme—the man whom we all look up to as the benefactor of a most miserable class of men—Mr. Percy Roden.”