“Yes! and she sent it back—a decent cheque too.”
“Quite right—they couldn’t take it from you—you of all men. What did you do then?”
“I ‘worked it,’ as ‘Tumbarumba Dick’ would say. He was one of the partners in the Lady Julia claim. I sent Dick the cheque; told him to get the diggers round about to form a relief committee, and to let them subscribe their share, then spread mine out in small amounts among the genuine ones. They couldn’t refuse the honest miners’ and their wives’ assistance. No people are so generous in cases of accident or distress. Thus my money ‘got there just the same,’ and helped to give the forlorn ones a fresh start.”
“Quite another romance—I suppose you have a slight tendresse in that direction still?”
“Not more than a man always has for a woman he has once loved, however badly she treated him; and that is a very mild, strictly rational sentiment; but you ought to have.”
“Why, I should like to know?”
“Because, of course, when she broke my heart, and sent me out into the world drifting purposeless, I fell across one Imogen Carrisforth, who towed the derelict into port—made prize of him, indeed, for ever and ever.”
“Well, I suppose she did shape our destiny, as you say—without the least intending it; and now I suspect she’ll shape the Colonel’s for good and all. They will be remarried quietly, live in the south of France, and the gay world will hear no more of them.”