ed.

"And you won't help me? You won't say a word to Fabian?"

She shrugged a shoulder. "If I were a man like you, who's so big, so
lucky, and so dominant, I wouldn't ask a woman to help me. I'd do the
job myself. I'd keep faith with my reputation. But there's one nice
thing about you: you're going to help Carnac to beat Barode Barouche.
You've made a gallant offer. If you'd gone against him, if you'd played
Barouche's game, I--"

The indignation which came to her face suddenly fled, and she said:
"Honestly, I'd never speak to you again, and I always keep my word.
Carnac'll see it through. He's a man of mark, Mr. Tarboe, and he'll be
Prime Minister of the whole country one day. I don't think you'll like
it."

"You hit hard, but if I hadn't taken the business, Carnac Grier wouldn't
have got it. If it hadn't been me, it would have been some one else."

"Well, why don't you live like a rich man and not like a foreman?"

"I've been too busy to change my mode of living. I only want enough to
eat and drink and wear, and that's not costly." Suddenly an idea came
to him. "Now, if that business had been left to you, you'd be building a
stone house somewhere; and you'd have horses and carriages, and lots
of servants, and you'd swing along like a pretty coloured bird in the
springtime, wouldn't you?"

"If I had wealth, I'd make it my servant. I'd give it its chance; but as
I haven't got it, I live as I do--poor and unknown."

"Not unknown. See, you could control what belonged to John Grier, if you
would. I need some one to show me how to spend the money coming from
the business. What is wealth unless you buy things that give pleasure to
life? Do you know--"

He got no further. "I don't know anything you're trying to tell me, and
anyhow this is not the place--" With that she hastened from him up the
street. Tarboe had a pang, and yet her very last words gave him hope. "I
may be a bit sharp in business," he said to himself, "but I certainly am
a fool in matters of the heart. Yet what she said at last had something
in it for me. Every woman has an idea where a man ought to make love to
her, and this open road certainly ain't the place. If Carnac wins this
game with Barouche I don't know where I'll be with her-maybe I'm a fool
to help him." He turned the letter over and over in his hand. "No, I'm
not. I ought to do it, and I will."

Then he fell to brooding. He remembered about the second hidden will.
There came upon him a