"What was it that she would see by waiting a little while?" she presently began to ask herself. Philip had spoken with significant meaning.
The two hundred pounds won by Philip Cleeve on Patchwork, at the Newmarket Spring Meeting, had to a great extent recouped him for his gambling losses. But some months had passed away since then, and his capital had again been dipped into pretty deeply. For one thing, he was less frugal in his habits than of old. His mother's allowance no longer sufficed to find him in clothes and pocket-money. His tailor's and bootmaker's bills were twice as heavy as they used to be, and of late there was no more fashionably dressed young man in Nullington than Philip Cleeve. At one time he had been content to play billiards for sixpence a game, but nothing less than half-a-crown a game would do for him now. He went to The Lilacs once a week, sometimes oftener, and although he no longer joined the card-table so frequently as in those earlier days, preferring to talk with Mrs. Ducie or turn over her music, yet he could not keep aloof from play altogether, and it was no unfrequent thing for him to find himself minus ten or fifteen sovereigns when he reached home. In short, by the beginning of September his capital had again shown a very serious deficit. More than once Captain Lennox said to him: "What a pity it is that you did not lay every sovereign you could scrape together on Patchwork. You will never have such a chance again." And Philip agreed with the Captain that it was a pity.
One day at The Lilacs, a little while previously to this present time, Philip found a printed paper on the table, which, for want of something better to do, he took up and glanced over. It proved to be a prospectus of the Hermandad Silver Mining Company, Colorado. Philip was surprised to see the name of his host, Captain Lennox, among the list of directors. "Why, Lennox," he said, "I was not aware that you went in for anything of this kind."
"It helps to kill time and gives me an excuse for running up to town now and then," answered Lennox. "Besides, these things bring one in contact with a lot of men who may prove useful some day or other."
"I presume that the Hermandad Mining Company is a prosperous concern?"
"My dear fellow, as yet it is in its babyhood: it has only been launched a few weeks. That it will prove a very prosperous thing, I never for one moment doubted; otherwise I should not have allowed my name to appear to it, nor should I have invested in it so much of my spare capital."
"Colorado seems a long way to send one's spare capital to," remarked Philip.
"A long way in this era of telegraphy? Pooh! There's no such thing as distance nowadays. Besides, the board has its own expert out there--a very clever young mining engineer--and his reports may be thoroughly relied upon. We know pretty well what we are about."
Philip was of opinion that the Captain knew pretty well what he was about in most of the concerns of life. "I suppose that every now and then one of these silver mines really does turn out to be a gold mine in one sense of the phrase," he observed.
"Now and then!" said Lennox, with a lifting of his eyebrows, "All I know is that there are two mines within a little distance of ours which are paying their lucky proprietors between thirty and forty per cent., and I know of no reason why the Hermandad should be poorer than its neighbours. All we want is more capital for its proper working; and that we are now about to raise. There will be no difficulty in doing _that!_"