He permitted himself the luxury of smiling blankly at her for a further
moment. Then he tossed his head, and laughed abruptly.

"Sit down, old girl," he adjured her. "Try and hold yourself together,
now--to hear some different kind of news. I've been playing it rather
low down on you, for a fact. Instead of my being smashed, it's the other
way about."

She continued to confront him, with a nervous clasp upon the chair-back.
Her breathing troubled her as she regarded him, and tried to take in the
meaning of his words.

"Do you mean--you've been lying to me about--about your Company?" she
asked, confusedly.

"No--no--not at all," he replied, now all genial heartiness. "No--what
I told you was gospel truth--but I was taking a rise out of you all the
same." He seemed so unaffectedly pleased by his achievement in kindly
duplicity that she forced an awkward smile to her lips.

"I don't understand in the least," she said, striving to remember what
he had told her. "What you said was that the public had entirely failed
to come in--that there weren't enough applications for shares to pay
flotation expenses--those were your own words. Of course, I don't
pretend to understand these City matters--but it IS the case, isn't it,
that if people don't subscribe for the shares of a new company, then the
company is a failure?"

"Yes, that may be said to be the case--as a general rule," he nodded at
her, still beaming.

"Well, then--of course--I don't understand," she owned.

"I don't know as you'll understand it much more when I've explained it
to you," he said, seating himself, and motioning her to the other chair.
"But yes, of course you will. You're a business woman. You know what
figures mean. And really the whole thing is as simple as A B C. You
remember that I told you----"

"But are you going to stop to supper? I must send Annie out before the
shops close."

"Supper? No--I couldn't eat anything. I'm too worked up for that. I'll
get something at the hotel before I go to bed, if I feel like it. But
say!"--the thought suddenly struck him--"if you want to come out with
me, I'll blow you off to the swaggerest dinner in London. What d'ye
say?"

She shook her head. "I shall have some bread and cheese and beer at
nine. That's my rule, you know. I don't like to break it. I'm always
queer next day if I do. But now make haste and tell me--you're really
not broken then? You have really come out well?"

For answer he rose, a