He shook his head.
"I was thinking of you."
"I? I'm not rich. I've been a fool!" she cried. "I should have made him settle something on me—half, at any rate. Now it's all gone; he's lost everything; I might as well have had half of it—as well that, as to throw it in the gutter as he did."
Wilkinson's confidential man seated himself.
"Unquestionably you need me," he said frankly, and then stopped. Hitherto he had kept his own counsel. And yet, he reflected, there is a wisdom of disclosure just as there is a wisdom of suppression. Some new impulse seized him; his voice sank into a whisper. "There is a chance for us, Mrs. Peter V., to be rich, if we work together, unusually rich."
"But how?" she whispered back, excitedly.
Flomerfelt smiled inscrutably, and answered:
"Out of the wreck, there's a chance——"
"A good chance?" she interrupted eagerly.
"There's only one man who can prevent it," he went on.