“We were together much of the evening. In one sense he has as much claim upon your thanks as myself, for only through him was I enabled to do Miss Dorothy a service,” replies Aleck, with the generous impulse of making his comrade “solid” with the great manipulator of wheat.
Samson Cereal gravely turns and holds out his hand.
“Allow me, sir; I appreciate the favor,” he says in the singularly deep voice that has many a time electrified the swaying masses of brokers and operators on change.
“You are perfectly free to speak upon any subject, sir,” adds Aleck.
“That being the case, I will no longer pique your curiosity, gentlemen. Am I right in believing that you have through accident learned certain things connected with a very wretched episode in my life?”
Aleck’s cheeks flush under his gaze, for somehow he feels as though Samson reproaches him.
“I beg you to believe, sir, I have not pried into your private affairs through morbid curiosity. A peculiar chain of circumstances, link fastened to link, one thing leading to another, has given me some knowledge of certain unhappy events far back in your life. I have not sought them, and once in my possession they shall go no further, depend upon it.”
His earnest manner, his frank expression, serve to convince the wheat king that what he says he means.
“Mr. Craig, I earnestly hope you will never have to encounter the family troubles that have darkened my past.”
Aleck secretly indorses this. It is bad enough for a bachelor of some thirty summers to think of being wedded once, let alone several times.