Their drive was a long one, and they talked a good deal. They talked of the Hutchinsons, of the invention, of the business “deals” Tembarom had entered into at the outset, and of their tremendously encouraging result. It was not mere rumor that Hutchinson would end by being a rich man. The girl would be an heiress. How complex her position would be! And being of the elect who unknowingly bear with them the power that “moves the world,” how would she affect Temple Barholm and its surrounding neighborhood?
“I wish to God she was here now!” exclaimed Tembarom, suddenly. “There’s times when you want a little thing like that just to talk things over with, just to ask, because you—you’re dead sure she’d never lose her head and give herself away without knowing she was doing it. It’s the keeping your mouth shut that’s so hard for most people, the not saying a darned thing, whatever happens, till just the right time.”
“Women cannot often do it,” said the duke. “Very few men can.”
“You’re right,” Tembarom answered, and there was a trifle of anxiety in his tone. “There’s women, just the best kind, that you daren’t tell a big thing to. Not that they’d mean to give it away,—perhaps they wouldn’t know when they did it,—but they’d feel so anxious they’d get—they’d get—”
“Rattled,” put in the duke, and knew of whom he was thinking. He saw Miss Alicia’s delicate, timid face as he spoke.
T. Tembarom laughed.
“That’s just it,” he answered. “They wouldn’t go back on you for worlds, but—well, you have to be careful with them.”
“He’s got something on his mind,” mentally commented the duke. “He is wondering if he will tell it to me.”
“And there’s times when you’d give half you’ve got to be able to talk a thing out and put it up to some one else for a while. I could do it with her. That’s why I said I wish to God that she was here.”
“You have learned to know how to keep still,” the duke said. “So have I. We learned it in different schools, but we have both learned.”