one hundred, and if that stock rose
to three hundred, could you make me give you your stock back? Certainly
not. The gain would be a perfectly legitimate product of my own
sharpness."

"Sharpness," said the bird woman, "that's just it. If Arthur had had
even sense, to say nothing of sharpness, things would have been very
different all round--all round."

She protruded her head from her boa and retracted it. Jones, furious,
dumb, with his hands in his pockets and his back against the window,
said nothing.

He never could have imagined that a baiting like this, over a matter
with which he had nothing to do, could have made him feel such a fool,
and such an ass.

He saw at once how Rochester had been done, and he felt, against all
reason, the shame that Rochester might have felt--but probably wouldn't.
His uncle, the Duke of Melford, for that was the choleric one's name,
his mother, the dowager Countess of Rochester, and his sister, the Hon.
Venetia Birdbrook, now all rose up and got together in a covey before
making their exit, and leaving this bad business and the fool who had
brought it about.

You can fancy their feelings. A man in Rochester's position may be
anything, almost, as long as he is wealthy, but should he add the crime
of poverty to his other sins he is lost indeed. And Rochester had not
only flung his money away, he had flung a coal mine after it.

No wonder that his uncle did not even glance at him again as he left the
room, shepherding the two women before him.

"It's unfortunate," said Collins, when they found themselves alone. It
was the mildest thing he could say, and he said it.

CHAPTER XII

THE GIRL IN THE VICTORIA

When Jones found himself outside the office at last, and in the bustle
of Fleet Street, he turned his steps west-wards.

He had almost forgotten the half formed determination to throw down his
cards and get up from this strange game, which he had formed when
Collins had asked him whether he would not have an interview with his
wife. This coal mine business pushed everything else aside for the
moment; the thought of that deal galvanized the whole business side of
his nature, so that, as he would have said himself, bristles stood on
it. A mine worth a million pounds, traded away for twenty five thousand
dollars!

He was taking the thing to heart, as though he himself had been tricked
by Mulhausen, and now as he walked, a block in the traffic brought him
back from h