Fatal words these of King Edward's will, for they secured the lifelong poverty of the grandson whose welfare he had at heart. During the few years of George's reign the royal coffers overflowed with gold. Bugbee, the King's banker, was exhaustless as an ocean of wealth.
But the revolution that banished the King and his noblemen, among them those who had been executors with Bugbee of King Edward's will, left the solemn little banker absolute master of the royal fortune—until George or his heir came back to reign as King of England.
For twenty years Mr. Bugbee had been in possession, or rather dominion. The poverty of the royal exile in America was well known to him; but to the demands and petitions of George and his "Court" he turned a deaf ear. His conscience, he answered, would not allow him to touch one penny of the treasure, which could only be legally drawn by a reigning King of England.
In the early years of the King's exile, Bugbee had sent considerable sums to his royal master, which he alleged were from his own purse; but though he had since continued these, the annual amount had been reduced to a beggarly allowance.
Still the old banker was the most trusted agent of the Royalists; and weak George himself regarded with a vague respect, almost like fear, the inflexible integrity which controlled the conscience of this most devoted subject.
Mrs. Oswald Carey did not hear the city clocks, which "clashed and hammered" the midnight hour, as her cab rolled up the tree-lined avenue of the pretentious house of "The King's Banker."
The driver rang the bell; and as the door almost instantly opened, Mrs. Carey, from the cab, saw several men in the wide hall, some sitting and others standing, like men in waiting.
A tall flunkey took the card, closed the door, and Mrs. Oswald Carey had to wait in the cab a full minute. Then the door opened, and down the wide steps of the porch hobbled Mr. Bugbee, with gouty, tender feet, the top of his bald head shining under the lamp.
"I had almost given you up," was his greeting; and as he helped the Beauty from the cab there was an unquestionable welcome in his gratified smile. That they had met before, and intimately, was evident in the manner of the reception. The truth was that Mrs. Oswald Carey and her husband were old connections of the banker, the husband through monetary difficulties and the wife through complications of her own, in which old Bugbee had, for some reason or other, assisted her more than once. She knew that her husband was in the old man's power, but she never pretended to know it. On his side, old Bugbee was a foresighted worker. For years past he had seen that the day of the King's return would come, and for that day he meant to be prepared in more ways than one. In his cunning old brain he had some plan laid away in which he had provided a part for this beautiful and utterly unprincipled woman.
"Am I too late?" asked Mrs. Oswald Carey.