Jack Dunquerque clasped Phillis tighter by the hand.
She only laughed.
"Why, Lawrence," she said, "what if you have lost all my money? Jack doesn't care. Do you Jack?"
"No, darling, no," said Jack. And at the moment—such was the infatuation of this young man—he really did not care.
"Lawrence," said Agatha, "you acted for the best. Don't dear Lawrence, don't trouble too much. Captain Ladds has lost all his fortune, too—and Mr. Beck has lost all his—and we are all ruined together."
"All ruined together!" echoed Gilead Beck, looking at Mrs. L'Estrange. "Gabriel Cassilis is a wonderful man. I always said he was a wonderful man."
In the evening the three ruined men sat together in Gilead's room.
"Nothing saved, Colquhoun?" asked Ladds, after a long pause.
"Nothing, The stock was 70 when I bought in: 70 at 10 percent. It is now anything you like—4, 6, 8, 16—what you please—because no one will buy it."
"Wal," said Gilead Beck, "it does seem rough on us all, and perhaps it's rougher on you two than it is on me. But to think, only to think, that such an almighty Pile should be fooled away on a darned half-caste State like Eldorado! And for all of us to believe Mr. Gabriel Cassilis a whole-souled, high toned speculator.