It was business of serious importance which was to bring Captain Palliser's visit to a close.He explained it perfectly to Miss Alicia a day or so after Lady Mallowe and her daughter left them.He had lately been most amiable in his manner toward Miss Alicia, and had given her much valuable information about companies and stocks.He rather unexpectedly found it imperative that he should go to London and Berlin to "see people"--dealers in great financial schemes who were deeply interested in solid business speculations, such as his own, which were fundamentally different from all others in the impeccable firmness of their foundations.
"I suppose he will be very rich some day," Miss Alicia remarked the first morning she and T.Tembarom took their breakfast alone together after his departure."It would frighten me to think of having as much money as he seems likely to have quite soon.""It would scare me to death," said Tembarom.She knew he was making a sort of joke, but she thought the point of it was her tremor at the thought of great fortune.
"He seemed to think that it would be an excellent thing for you to invest in--I'm not sure whether it was the India Rubber Tree Company, or the mahogany forests or the copper mines that have so much gold and silver mixed in them that it will pay for the expense of the digging--" she went on.
"I guess it was the whole lot," put in Tembarom.
"Perhaps it was.They are all going to make everybody so rich that it is quite bewildering.He is very clever in business matters.And so kind.He even said that if I really wished it he might be able to invest my income for me and actually treble it in a year.But of course I told him that my income was your generous gift to me, and that it was far more than sufficient for my needs."Tembarom put down his coffee-cup so suddenly to look at her that she was fearful that she had appeared to do Captain Palliser some vague injustice.
"I am sure he meant to be most obliging, dear," she explained."I was really quite touched.He said most sympathetically and delicately that when women were unmarried, and unaccustomed to investment, sometimes a business man could be of use to them.He forgot"--affectionately--"that I had you."
Tembarom regarded her with tender curiosity.She often opened up vistas for him as he himself opened them for the Duke of Stone.
"If you hadn't had me, would you have let him treble your income in a year?" he asked.
Her expression was that of a soft, woodland rabbit or a trusting spinster dove.
"Well, of course, if one were quite alone in the world and had only a small income, it would be nice to have it wonderfully added to in such a short time," she answered."But it was his friendly solicitude which touched me.I have not been accustomed to such interested delicacy on the part of--of gentlemen." Her hesitance before the last word being the result of training, which had made her feel that it was a little bold for "ladies" to refer quite openly to "gentlemen.""You sometimes read in the newspapers," said Tembarom, buttering his toast, "about ladies who are all alone in the world with a little income, but they're not often left alone with it long.It's like you said--you've got me; but if the time ever comes when you haven't got me just you make a dead-sure thing of it that you don't let any solicitous business gentleman treble your income in a year.If it's an income that comes to more than five cents, don't you hand it over to be made into fifteen.Five cents is a heap better--just plain five.""Temple!" gasped Miss Alicia."You--you surely cannot mean that you do not think Captain Palliser is--sincere!"Tembarom laughed outright, his most hilarious and comforting laugh.He had no intention of enlightening her in such a manner as would lead her at once to behold pictures of him as the possible victim of appalling catastrophes.He liked her too well as she was.
"Sincere?" he said."He's sincere down to the ground --in what he's reaching after.But he's not going to treble your income, nor mine.If he ever makes that offer again, you just tell him I'm interested, and that I'll talk it over with him.""I could not help saying to him that I didn't think you could want any more money when you had so much," she added, "but he said one never knew what might happen.He was greatly interested when I told him you had once said the very same thing yourself."Their breakfast was at an end, and he got up, laughing again, as he came to her end of the table and put his arm around her shoulders in the unconventional young caress she adored him for.
"It's nice to be by ourselves again for a while," he said."Let us go for a walk together.Put on the little bonnet and dress that are the color of a mouse.Those little duds just get me.You look so pretty in them."The sixteen-year-old blush ran up to the roots of her gray side-ringlets.Just imagine his remembering the color of her dress and bonnet, and thinking that anything could make her look pretty! She was overwhelmed with innocent and grateful confusion.There really was no one else in the least like him.
"You do look well, ma'am," Rose said, when she helped her to dress.
"You've got such a nice color, and that tiny bit of old rose Mrs.
Mellish put in the bonnet does bring it out.""I wonder if it is wrong of me to be so pleased," Miss Alicia thought.
"I must make it a subject of prayer, and ask to be aided to conquer a haughty and vain-glorious spirit."She was pathetically serious, having been trained to a view of the Great First Cause as figuratively embodied in the image of a gigantic, irascible, omnipotent old gentleman, especially wrought to fury by feminine follies connected with becoming headgear.