"It's the fortune of war. A little starving won't do her any harm; and I dare say she won't starve long. I never liked the girl."
"Nor I."
"Then there you are; why worry? She's too superior for me, too good; knocking about in the gutter may bring her down to your level, and mine; I've known it pan out that way where a young woman's concerned. I don't like any one to be too good, it makes me conscious of my own deficiencies; you see, I'm candid. However, she's a factor with whom we may, or may not, deal later. At present we've to concentrate our attention on Clifford; think of the possibilities for him, and for us. No one knows of the connection between Oldfield and Lindsay; no one even knows that he's dead. Clifford already has powers to draw cheques in the name of the firm, within certain limits; a man capable of committing forgery will soon be able to make those limits wider; there's no reason why he shouldn't appropriate to his own use every penny that comes in; as things stand nobody'll be able to call him to account for it; there's no reason why he should not lay hands on the whole of the old gentleman's investments; and they're--you may take it from me that they're magnificent. We're the only persons on this side of the grave who can stop him, and there's no reason why we should, if he gives us a proper share; in other words, if he takes us in as partners."
"It's playing with fire."
"Not a bit of it; it's playing with nothing that's in the least dangerous, if it's managed as I propose to manage it. You think it over. And now you take me in to lunch, and let me have the pleasure of meeting that charming wife of yours again; I'm starving! And if by the time we've done lunch you haven't formulated a scheme of your own I'll tell you what mine is, and then you'll see that without the slightest danger to either of us, without the shadow of a shade of danger--there's no reason why we shouldn't, within a very short space of time, be worth a quarter of a million apiece."
"A quarter of a million!"
"At least; we're going to deal with big figures, my boy. It'll pay Clifford, pay him handsomely, to split it up into three parts; and let me tell you that a third ought to come out at a good deal more than a quarter of a million."
Herbert Nash hesitated--for his credit's sake let it be written that he did hesitate--but he took Mr. Morgan home with him to lunch. And when his wife saw the visitor coming she would have been almost glad if the earth could have opened to swallow her up; it was as if she beheld avenging fate advancing towards her in the shape of a policeman. Her husband was late; it was long after their usual hour for lunch; he had left no word as to where he had gone; half beside herself with anxiety, she would have liked to send the town crier round in search of him; she had been along the pavement to the corner of this street and the corner of that, to and fro across the common for a glimpse of him along the front; these manœuvres she had repeated again and again, and, standing on the doorstep, was frantically debating within herself as to what could have become of him, as to what she should do, when she saw him coming with Morgan at his side. Then, if she could, she would have run away, but she could not, her feet were as if they had been shod with iron weights, she could not lift them; she could not move; when they came to her she was a white-faced, shivering, terror-stricken little wretch; a poor ghost of the sunny-faced, light-hearted Elaine Harding of such a little while ago.
Mr. Nash offered a pretty lame explanation of his appearance with the man of whose presumption in claiming his acquaintance he had spoken with such scorn in the morning.
"This is Mr. Morgan; he is going to have some lunch with us; we have business to transact together. You remember Mr. Morgan, Elaine?"