John Turner bit the first joint of his thumb reflectively. It is so rare that one can tell any one all about anything.
“Tell me first,” Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence suggested, “whether Miriam Liston’s money is all safe as well.”
“Miriam’s money never was in danger,” he replied. “Miriam is my ward; you are only my client. There is no chance of Miriam being able to make ducks and drakes of her money.”
“That sounds as if I had been trying to do that with mine.
“Well,” admitted the banker, with a placid laugh, “if it had not been for my failure—”
“Don’t call it hard names,” put in Dormer Colville, generously. “It was not a failure.”
“Call it a temporary suspension of payment, then,” agreed the banker, imperturbably. “If it had not been for that, half your fortune would have been goodness knows where by now. You wanted to put it into some big speculation in this country, if I remember aright. And big speculations in France are the very devil just now. Whereas, now, you see, it is all safe and you can invest it in the beginning of next year in some good English securities. It seems providential, does it not?”
He rose as he spoke and held out his hand to say good-bye. He asked the question of Colville’s necktie, apparently, for he smiled stupidly at it.
“Well, I do not understand business after all, I admit that,” Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence called out gaily to him as he went toward the door. “I do not understand things at all.”
“No, and I don’t suppose you ever will,” Turner replied as he followed the servant into the corridor.