"If it pleases me to be a fool, why not?"
"Has it never occurred to you that any morning the newspapers may tell us that my cousin, Gerald Brooke, has been captured? Every day, that is the first news I look for."
"Ah, bah! you mock yourself. Your cousin will never be arrested now; he has got safe away to some foreign country long ago."
"You have no ground for saying that. Any hour may bring the tidings of his capture, and then---- But you know already what the result of his conviction would be to you and me. Beechley Towers and six thousand a year--nothing less."
"You deceive yourself," resumed Steph. "You are waiting for what will never happen. Nine months have passed since the murder, and the crime is half forgotten. You let Gerald Brooke slip through your fingers once; but you will never have the chance of doing so again.--Let us come back to realities, to the things we can touch. Dreams never had any charms for me."
He went back to the fireplace with his cigar, and took up a position on the hearthrug. "As you say--let us stick to realities; it may perhaps be the wisest," he went on. "What, then, would you think, what would you say, if I were to tell you as a fact that in less than six weeks from to-day I shall be in possession of ten thousand pounds?"
"I should both think and say that it was not a fact, but a dream, a--what do you call it?--a Will-o'-the-wisp."
"And yet it is not a dream, but a sober solid fact, as a very short time will prove."
She raised her eyebrows; evidently, she was incredulous. "Yon made sure that you would win two thousand pounds at Doncaster, whereas you contrived to lose five hundred. You were just as certain that you would win"----
"What I am referring to now has nothing to do with horseracing," he broke in impatiently.--"Listen!" he added; and with that he planted himself astride a chair and confronted her, resting his arms on the back of it and puffing occasionally at his cigar as he talked. "I am about to tell you something which it was my intention not to have spoken about till later on; but it matters little whether you are told now or a month hence." He moved his chair nearer to her, and when he next spoke it was in a lower voice: "The young Earl of Leamington, who is enormously rich, is to be married on the 27th of next month. On the 14th of April one of the partners in a certain well-known firm of London jewellers, accompanied by an assistant, will start for the Earl's seat in the north carrying with him jewelry of the value of over twenty thousand pounds, for the purpose of enabling his lordship to select certain presents for his bride. That box of jewelry will never reach its destination."