"My lad!" interrupted Farebrother, "you're always too optimistic, and too ready to believe in people. The woman's just the sort to do anybody out of anything—she did both you and Scholes over the land. It's hers—and so is all that's beneath it, to the centre of the earth. You should have bought it yourself."
"I?—a complete stranger!" protested Mortimer. "Impossible! There would have been suspicion with a vengeance!"
"Then you should have made an arrangement with her before she got it," said Farebrother. "She's got it now—and all that it implies. And my belief is that she's up to something. The last two or three times I've been in the town I've seen her coming out of solicitors' offices—she's at some game or another. She'll do you out of any share that you want to get in this very promising mine unless you're careful, and if you take my advice you'll put it straight and unmistakably to her, and ask her what she's going to do."
Mortimer protested and explained, but when dinner was over he went round to Jeckie's private door, and after a slight interchange of casual remarks, asked her point-blank what she was going to do about starting a company to work the mine. Jeckie pointed to a large, legal-looking envelope which lay on the table.
"It's done," she said calmly. "There'll be no company. Me and a friend of mine have gone into partnership to work it—there's the deed, duly signed to-day. We're going to start operations very soon."
Mortimer felt his cheeks flush—more from the memory of what Farebrother had said than with his very natural indignation.
"But what about me?" he exclaimed. "Why—I gave you the idea! I said from the first that I'd find money towards the company and knew others who would. It was my idea altogether—mine entirely. I only gave you the chance of coming in—I——"
"Whose land is it?" demanded Jeckie, coolly. "Did I buy it? Is it mine? If you wanted it why didn't you buy it? I bought it; it's my land. And—all that's beneath it. Do you think I was going to do that for other folks? We do nowt for nobody hereabouts, unless there's something to be made at it, my lad! But, of course, I'll pay you and your friend for your professional services—you must send your bill in."
Mortimer rose from his chair and looked at the woman in whom, half-an-hour previously, he had expressed his belief.
"So you've done me, too?" he said, simply. "You know well enough what my intentions were about this mine—of which you'd never have known, never have dreamed, if I hadn't told you of it. Do you call that honest—to do what you are doing?"