It is impossible.'
'Then there is the obvious alternative.'
'No, I had rather die. I will never go bankrupt--never!'
Harrison began to laugh, and then turned stonily solemn as he met a pair of reproachful grey eyes.
'It strikes me that you have not done much at this game, Crosse.'
'Never before--and by Heaven, never again!'
'You take it much too hard. When I spoke of an alternative, I never dreamed of bankruptcy. All you have to do is to sell your stock to- morrow morning, and pay the difference.'
'Can I do that?'
'Rather. Why not?'
'What would the difference be?'
Harrison took an evening paper from his pocket. 'We deal in rails chiefly, and I don't profess to keep in touch with the mining market. We'll find the quotation here. By Jove!' He whistled between his teeth.
'Well!' said Frank, and felt his wife's little warm palm fall upon his hand under the table.
'The difference is in your favour.'
'In my favour?'
'Yes, listen to this. "The mining markets, both the South African and the Australian, opened dull, but grew more animated as the day proceeded, prices closing at the best. Out crops upon the Rand mark a general advance of one-sixteenth to one-eighth. The chief feature in the Australian section was a sharp advance of five-eighths in El Dorados, upon a telegram that the workings had been pumped dry." Crosse, I congratulate you.'
'I can really sell them for more than I gave?'
'I should think so. You have two hundred of them, and a profit of ten shillings on each.'
'Maude, we'll have the whisky and the soda. Harrison, you must have a drink. Why, that's a hundred pounds.'
'More than a hundred.'
'Without my paying anything?'
'Not a penny.'
'When does the Exchange open to-morrow?'
'The rattle goes at eleven.'
'Well, be there at eleven, Harrison. Sell them at once.'
'You won't hold on and watch the market?'
'No, no--I won't have an easy moment until they are sold.'
'All right, my boy. You can rely upon me. You will get a cheque for your balance on Tuesday or Wednesday. Good evening! I am so glad that it has all ended well.'
'And the joke of it is, Maude,' said her husband, after they had talked over the whole adventure from the beginning. 'The joke of it is that we have still to find an investment for our original fifty pounds. I am inclined to put it into Consols after all.'
'Well,' said Maude, 'perhaps it would be the patriotic thing to do.'
Two days later the poor old Broadwood with the squeaky treble and the wheezy bass was banished for ever from The Lindens, and there arrived in its place a ninety-five-guinea cottage grand, all dark walnut and gilding, with notes in it so deep and rich and resonant that Maude could sit before it by the hour and find music enough in simply touching one here and one there, and listening to the soft, sweet, reverberant tones which came swelling from its depths. Her El Dorado piano, she called it, and tried to explain to lady visitors how her husband had been so clever at business that he had earned it in a single day. As she was never very clear in her own mind how the thing had occurred, she never succeeded in explaining it to any one else, but a vague and solemn impression became gradually diffused abroad that young Mr. Frank Crosse was a very remarkable man, and that he had done something exceedingly clever in the matter of an Australian mine.
CHAPTER XVIII--A THUNDERCLOUD
Blue skies and shining sun, but far down on the horizon one dark cloud gathers and drifts slowly upwards unobserved. Frank Crosse was aware of its shadow when coming down to breakfast he saw an envelope with a well-remembered handwriting beside his plate. How he had loved that writing once, how his heart had warmed and quickened at the sight of it, how eagerly he had read it--and now a viper coiled upon the white table-cloth would hardly have given him a greater shock. Contradictory, incalculable, whimsical life! A year ago how scornfully he would have laughed, what contemptuous unbelief would have filled his soul, if he had been told that any letter of hers could have struck him cold with the vague apprehension of coming misfortune.