“Do you think,” he continued, extending an almost melodramatically gesticulating hand towards the astonished captain, “that there is any soft, silk-bound pillow in Mayfair that could appeal to me when I could sleep under the stars?”
“Heavens!” He reached out his arms and brought them to his sides again with a strenuous motion, all his muscles contracted. “I have learnt,” he cried, “the lesson that life is not only real and earnest, but that life is hard, that life is a battle—a battle to be won!”
His eyes fell upon his strong, sinewy, brown hands, and he clenched his fists.
“I am not going back to England to make pleasure, but to fight—to win the girl of the picture—from you!”
But now, to Westerham's surprise, Melun had turned to sneering. The baronet was a breed of man the captain did not understand; no man that he had as yet been acquainted with loosed his heart in this wild manner. It seemed to him that Westerham was but a romantic child.
But there was no childhood, no romance, in the bitter gaze he lifted his eyes to meet.
“Listen,” said Westerham, quietly, “for a hundred thousand pounds I expect you to place yourself at my disposal. For a hundred thousand pounds I expect not only your services, but the services of all those whom you employ. And the greatest of these services will be silence.
“I am going back to England as Sir Paul Westerham, Baronet, the richest man in the world. Thanks to the prying of the New York reporters I have had to sail on this ship in my own name. I did not wish it, and I have no intention of ever being discovered in London in the same character as I left New York.”
Westerham laughed a little to himself.
“No reporters at the dock-side for me,” he said. “No triumphal entry into London. No account of what I eat and do, and how many hours a night I sleep. I am going back to London to do precisely as I choose.”