Had she been asked to name the reason for so abnormal and morbid a fancy, she would have been utterly powerless to do so. Maxwell Fair was as much of a puzzle to her as he was to everybody, both in society and in the city. This man, whose name was now in everybody’s mouth as the most daring and successful operator on ’Change, had come to London less than five years before with nothing, so far as was known, but the entailed and heavily burdened estates in Norfolk which he had inherited from his father, who, old men declared, had been little short of a madman.
By a series of dashing ventures in mining stocks Fair had attracted attention, and, what was more to the purpose, accumulated enough ready cash to enable him to avail himself of the situation then confronting the speculative world. At the very top of the Kaffir and other South African securities boom, when men were buying with an eagerness and recklessness amounting to frenzy, Fair was quietly selling, so that when the crash came and the breaking out of the Boer War knocked the bottom out of values, he had the satisfaction of buying back at panic prices the very shares which he had prudently disposed of at absurdly exaggerated prices some time before.
Establishing his family in the mansion which he had bought in the princely Carlton House Terrace, Fair rapidly became as fascinating and puzzling in society as he had proved Napoleonic and baffling in Throgmorton street, where was his office. Women found him quaintly and refreshingly chivalrous and almost annoyingly happy as a conversationalist, while men who sought his acquaintance with an eye to business connections—and were disappointed—discovered that the chap from whom they had hoped to learn the secrets of success was a fellow of infinite jest, a capital raconteur and a frank, generous, genial companion withal.
Such was Maxwell Fair when once more the newspapers announced that he had disposed of the celebrated Empire Mines stock which he had picked up—after a personal inspection of the property in Mexico—when nobody else would touch it, at the staggering figure of over ten times what he had paid for the shares, netting by the transaction close upon two hundred thousand pounds.
At innumerable dinner-tables at that moment he was being discussed, envied and lauded to the skies—and he himself sat with flushed, nervous face awaiting guests, and now bidding the strangest woman whom he had ever met enter with some message from the nursery.
“The children are ready for bed, Mr. Fair,” said Miss Mettleby, standing in that humble posture which he had begged her never to assume, because it somehow irritated him very much. “Are they to come down to say good night? Or shall you come up?”
“That will do, Baxter,” said Fair, noticing that the old butler still puttered about the room as if intending to remain. Baxter reluctantly went out and closed the door, which, one is disposed to fear, meant that the interested old servant did not go far on its other side.
“I am engaged,” continued Fair, looking up at Miss Mettleby. “I will go up and kiss them afterward. Sit down—no, not on that chest, please.”
“Why not?” asked Miss Mettleby, surprised. “It’s my favorite seat—it is so comfortable.”
“It makes me uncomfortable to see you sit there—at any time,” answered Fair, endeavoring to appear whimsical and indifferent, as usual. “So—thank you. That’s better. Well, Kate, the three months are over—to the very day, I believe. Coincidences are strange sometimes, are they not? The time is up. Have you decided?”