"Why can't you?"
"Because I'm a beggar."
Nicholas Jelnik a beggar couldn't find lodgment in my brain. I could only stare at him incredulously.
"I learned some time ago that things were not altogether right over yonder, but I hadn't the ghost of an idea that my entire estate was involved; that while I'd been 'tramping'—I'll use Judge Gatchell's word—the men in whose hands I placed too much power had taken advantage of it. A very common, every-day story, you see.
"Remains the fact that I'm stripped to the bone. The estate's wiped out. And," he added, with a grave smile, "I haven't even discovered the mythical Hynds jewels. Now you see, Sophy, why I can't marry you."
"I see why you think you can't."
He flushed to the roots of his black hair. Hynds-Jelnik pride rose in arms.
"I should cut rather a sorry figure marrying the owner of Hynds House, in the present circumstances," he said curtly. "You will remember that The Author called me an adventurer! I have told you I have nothing."
"Aren't you forgetting your profession?"
"No. But I neglected that, too, Sophy. The Wanderlust had me in its grip."