bag a chequebook. Then she sat down at the writing-table and proceeded to make out a cheque.
"I shall have to post-date it about a month," she said, apologetically, to Roland, "to give me time, you know, to realize the securities in which my money is invested. Do you mind?"
"But really, Mrs. Windleband, I can't allow this," protested Roland. "It is too generous of you. You must not beggar yourself for your husband's sake. After all, I bought the shares with my eyes open"
"If you don't let me buy them back from you I shall go mad and probably kill myself," declared Mrs. Windleband, hysterically. "I should never know another minute's happiness as long as I lived, if I did not right the wrong which my husband has done to you."
She signed the cheque and, tearing it out of the book, handed it over to Roland.
"If you will just give me some sort of receipt, saying that this is for shares which you will have transferred to me as soon as the necessary documents can be signed, that will make an end of the whole dreadful business, and my mind will be at rest again," she said.
For just one second Roland hesitated—but only for one second. Then he handed the cheque back.
"I can't take your money, Mrs. Windleband, really I can't," he said, simply. "It's noble and generous in the extreme of you to offer to make this sacrifice, but I can't accept it. I've still got a little money left; and I've always been used to working for my living, anyhow. I—I—can't tell you how I admire you—but tear this up, please."
"Mr. Bleke—I implore you!" She had flung herself on her knees before him and was making frenzied efforts to thrust the cheque back into his hands.
This was the moment selected by Parkinson, the impeccable butler of the Windleband establishment, to enter the room. The scene which met his eyes may have surprised Parkinson, but no trace of this betrayed itself upon his calm, immobile features. In his hand he had an evening paper, which he gave to Roland.
"The paper which you asked me to get for you, sir."
That was all he said. And then he withdrew.
"Parkinson told me he was going down to the village this afternoon, so I asked him to get me an evening paper," explained Roland, apologetically. "I wanted to see how the Test Match was going."
He was just about to throw the paper carelessly aside—for who, at a moment of such dramatic stress as that through which he was just passing, wanted to read about Test Matches?—when a flaring headline which ran right across the front page arrested his eye.
"Why!" he exclaimed. "It says something here about Wildcats!"
"Does it?" Mrs. Windleband's voice sounded strangely dull and toneless. Her eyes were closed and she was swaying to and fro, as if she were just about to faint.
Roland had not over-stated the case. There certainly was something about Wildcats. Indeed, there was hardly anything about anything except Wildcats. Even the Test Match was relegated to the back page.
This was what the headlines alone had to say:—
The Wildcat Reef Gold-mine.
Another Klondyke.
Frenzied scenes on the Stock Exchange.
Brokers fight for shares.
Record boom.
Unprecedented rise in prices.
Shorn of all superfluous adjectives and general journalistic exuberance, what the paper had to announce to its readers was this:—
The "special commissioner" sent out by the Financial Argus to make an exhaustive examination of the Wildcat Reef Mine—with the amiable view, no doubt, of exploding Dermot Windleband once and for all with the confiding British public—had found, to his unbounded astonishment, that there were vast quantities of gold in the mine.
The publication of their expert's report in the Financial Argus had resulted in a boom in Wildcat Reefs the like of which had never before been known on the Stock Exchange. In less than two days the one-pound shares had gone up from something like one shilling and sixpence per bundle to nearly ten pounds a share, and even at this latter figure people were literally fighting to secure them.
As she read the pregnant news over Roland's shoulder, Mrs. Windleband burst once more into expressions of gratitude to Providence.
"Oh, thank Heaven, thank Heaven!" she cried, hysterically. "Then my Dermot was not swindling you after all! He must have known all the time that the shares were going to rise like this. He said something about it when he told me that he had sold the shares to you, but I didn't believe him. I thought it was only an excuse. Oh—how I have misjudged my poor dear darling!" She dabbed pathetically at her weeping eyes. "I feel so happy, so relieved, that I must go to my room and have a real good cry!"
Roland made no effort to deter her. He
Vol. xlvii.—72
