“You’d like to come up to your room,” she said, her pleading gray eyes on the flushed dark face and her feet moving toward the door.
He got up with alacrity. The ginger tweeds he wore were too short at the arms and legs, too wide across the back, but nothing could make him look anything but carelessly elegant. He had the lethargic air of the true Piccadilly product—the men you jostle by the dozen on the pavement there, who have just life enough and energy enough to put on an immaculate frock-coat, with a wired flower in the buttonhole.
They went up the oak stairs and into the best spare room. Pamela shut the door.
“It’s a bigger room than I’ve been accustomed to,” he said, with a shrug of his thin shoulders and a bitter smile.
“If you were more ashamed,” she said, trying to let condemnation get the stronger hold of her, “I should be more pleased. You are not ashamed; you are not silent.”
“Why should I be? To be found out is a blunder. I am annoyed, that’s all. I was a catspaw—in other words, a fool. Overent and Bladden both got off to Spain: £40,000 in the cab that took them to Victoria! What luck! I tell you, Pamela, the thought of those two fellows nearly drove me to suicide when I was in prison. But the game isn’t up——”
She gave a little scream; then, in a fright, put her hand on her mouth.
“But you’ll never again——”
“Pooh! my darling—business is business. Bogus company promoting is as honest a profession as—stock-broking, for example, or making a corner. Suppose the gold-fields, or diamond-fields, or petroleum-wells don’t exist—that’s business. If not, where is the use of fools? The small capitalist must have been created with some object.”
“You are hopeless. I dread to think of what the end may be. At all events”—she moved her head toward the door and tapped her foot softly on the floor—“you’ll leave him alone.”