Cornelia drew a sharp breath of excitement.
“You did resign—for money? In spite of all! For only that?”
“It’s a very big ‘only,’ Miss Briskett. You don’t know how it feels to have your income suddenly reduced by two-thirds.”
“Oh, don’t I just! I know how it feels to have it wiped clean away. I guess my Poppar’s dropped about as much in one slump as any man in the States!” cried Cornelia, with the true American’s pride in size, be it for good or ill. She did not feel it necessary to state that the lost fortune had been more than retrieved, for one of the very few points on which she found herself in complete agreement with her aunt, was the suppression of her own wealth. She had no wish to be judged from a monetary standpoint, and Poppar’s fame had not travelled across the ocean. He was just an ordinary everyday millionaire, with a modest little income of from three to four hundred a day; not a real, genuine high-flyer, with a thousand an hour!
“I had to give up my frills and fixings, but I held on like grim death to the things that mattered.—I guess there’s something wrong about your army, if a man’s got to have a fortune before he can be an officer!”
“A good many people are with you there, Miss Briskett, but unfortunately that does not alter the fact.”
“Then—what did you do after that?”
“Cleared out! I sold my uniform for eighty pounds!”—he laughed again, the same sore laugh—“and gave my orderly about a dozen suits of ordinary clothes. The only thing I kept was my sword. I had ten swords hung on my walls, used by ten generations in succession—I couldn’t give that up. ... An old chum was going out ranching to the wildest part of California. He asked me to come with him, and I jumped at it. I wanted to get out of the country—away from it all. If I’d seen the regiment riding through the streets, I should have gone mad! ... We sailed within a few weeks...”
“California!” Cornelia’s face was eloquent with meaning. She had seen a regiment of Lancers riding through the streets of London on the one day which she had spent in the metropolis; had stood to stare open-mouthed, even as the crowd who thronged the pavement. She recalled the figure of the officer, a gorgeous, mediaeval knight, impenetrably lifeless, sitting astride his high horse like a figure of bronze; a glimpse of haughty, set features visible between cap and chin-strap. Outwardly immovable, indifferent; but within!—ah! within, beyond a doubt, a swelling pride in himself, in his men, in the noble animals which bore them; in the consciousness that every day the pageant attracted the same meed of admiration; pride in the consciousness that he represented his King, his Empire, the power of the sword! Cornelia, a stranger and a Republican, had thrilled at the sight of the gallant Lancers, and—she had visited the wilds of California also, and had received hospitality at a lonely ranch! There was a husky note in her voice as she spoke again.
“How long were you there?”