"I've caught a slide cold, I fadcy," said Roland, accompanying the remark with a trumpet obbligato on his handkerchief. "You see, we've been flying about more or less all night—that French ass lost his bearings—and my suit is a bit thin. But I'm all right."
"You're not all right, my dear boy," insisted Mrs. Windleband, with an air of almost motherly solicitude. "You ought to be in bed."
"Perhaps you're right," admitted Roland, looking helplessly round, as though he expected to see a bed somewhere on the surrounding lawn. "Can you tell me if there is an hotel anywhere near?"
"Hotel? I'm not going to let a man in your condition go to any hotel," announced Dermot, in his big-hearted way, taking Roland, as he spoke, firmly by the arm. "You're coming right into my house and up to bed this instant minute."
Roland's first instinct, when he discovered that the Good Samaritan who had taken him in was no less a personage than the great Dermot Windleband, was to struggle out of bed and make his escape, even though the effort were to cost him his life. Dermot Windleband was a name which Roland, during his mercantile career, had learned to hold in something closely approaching to reverence—as that of one of the mightiest business brains of our time. Even old Fineberg, whose opinion of humanity at large was unflattering in the extreme, accorded to Dermot Windleband a sort of grudging admiration.
To have to meet so eminent a person in the capacity of an invalid—a nuisance about the house—made Roland long for a rapidly fatal termination to his illness. The kindnesses of the Windlebands—and there seemed to be nothing that they were not ready to do for him—worried him almost into his grave. When Mrs. Windleband came into the room in which he lay and, with her own hands, poured out his medicine and put his bed straight, and then sat down and read to him, Roland suffered tortures of embarrassment. Mrs. Windleband was an angel, he admitted that; but angels' visits, to a man of retiring disposition, are apt to be trying. He felt even worse when the great Dermot himself came up to the sick-room and sprawled genially over the bed, chatting away just as if he were an ordinary human being and not one of the Master-Minds of the Century. Roland wanted to hide his head under the bed-clothes, so unworthy did he feel of this high honour.
How he came to tell the Windlebands all about the unfortunate matter of Muriel Coppin, Roland never quite knew; but he did. They were very sympathetic. Mrs. Windleband said she could see clearly that Muriel was a designing young woman, from whom Roland was quite right to run away. The great Dermot was of the same opinion, but added that he feared his spirited action was going to cost Roland a bit.
"Tell you what I'll do," said Dermot, after thinking over the situation for a while, "I'll send my own lawyer down to her with, say, one thousand pounds—not a cheque, understand, but one thousand golden sovereigns that he can show her—roll about on the table in front of her eyes. Very few people of that class can resist money when they see it in the raw. She'll probably jump at the thousand and you'll be out of your trouble."
"I'd rather make it two thousand," said Roland. He had never loved Muriel Coppin, and the idea of marrying her had been a sort of nightmare to him, but he wanted to retreat with honour.
"Very well, make it two, if you like," assented Dermot, indifferently; "though I don't quite know how old Harrison is going to carry all that money."
As a matter of fact, old Harrison never had to try. On thinking it over (after he had cashed Roland's cheque) Dermot came to the conclusion that seven hundred pounds would be quite as much money as it would be good for Miss Coppin to have all at once; and so it was with seven hundred sovereigns only that old Harrison was sent out on his errand of temptation. As Dermot had foreseen, the sight of the virgin gold was too much for Miss Coppin. She jumped at it.
Roland, man-like, was a little disappointed when he heard that Muriel had agreed to settle. Glad as he was to escape marrying her, he did feel that she ought to have demanded higher compensation than a beggarly two thousand pounds for his loss. He hinted this to Dermot. In the circumstances Dermot did the right—the tactful thing. He forebore from hurting his guest's feelings still further by enlightening him to the fact that Miss Coppin had been quite content to accept a market valuation of her last lover which amounted to little more than a third of that sum.
Roland was able to sit up and take nourishment—nay, to come down to the dining-room and take nourishment in large quantities—before the Napoleon of France began the real campaign.
Dermot selected with care the right
