"My luck has turned at last, Oswald," exclaimed Mark impulsively.
"In what way?" asked Oswald, who was leaning over the back of a chair while he talked to Miss Bettina.
"I have just had a letter from Barker," answered Mark, running his hand through his hair with his restless fingers. "I told you what a great scheme he had got on hand in Paris, but you turned the cold shoulder on it. Well, it's bearing fruit at last."
"Oh," said Oswald, evincing a desire, if his tone and manner might be judged by, to turn the cold shoulder on it still, metaphorically speaking. "How is your wife this afternoon?" he continued, passing to a different subject.
"She has been so much better the last few days that one might almost be tempted to hope she'd get well again," rejoined Mark, volubly. "She seems tired now--low, I thought. Sara's just gone up to her. What a shame it is that things turn out so cross-grained and contrary!"
The concluding sentence, delivered with marked acumen, reached the ear of Miss Bettina. She looked up from her knitting to scan Mark.
"If Barker's luck had only been realised six months ago, what a thing it would have been!" he went on. "Caroline might have got better, instead of worse. In the enjoyment of luxuries in a home of her own, renewed wealth and position in prospective, with the pure air of the balmy French capital, there's no knowing what benefit she might not have derived. And now it comes too late! I shall ever regret it for her sake."
"Regret what?" sharply interposed Miss Bettina.
Mark replied by giving a summary of Barker's luck. Miss Bettina paused, knitting-needles in hand, her keen grey eyes fixed on Mark, as she tried to understand him.
"Barker in luck!" she repeated, catching some of the words and the general sense. "Has he come into an estate in the moon? Don't be a simpleton, Mark Cray."