t respect which he always
accorded to his father.

"I imagine," went on Sir John, "that the novelists and poets are
not very far wrong. It seems that there is such a thing as a humdrum
happiness in marriage. I have seen quite elderly people who seem still
to take pleasure in each other's society. With the example of my own
life before me, I wanted yours to be different. My motive was not
entirely bad. But perhaps you know your own affairs best. What money
have you?"

Jack moved uneasily in his chair.

"I have completed the sale of the last consignment of Simiacine," he
began categorically. "The demand for it has increased. We have now sold
two hundred thousand pounds worth in England and America. My share is
about sixty thousand pounds. I have invested most of that sum, and my
present income is a little over two thousand a year."

Sir John nodded gravely.

"I congratulate you," he said; "you have done wonderfully well. It is
satisfactory in one way, in that it shows that, if a gentleman
chooses to go into these commercial affairs, he can do as well as the
bourgeoisie. It leads one to believe that English gentlemen are not
degenerating so rapidly as I am told the evening Radical newspapers
demonstrate for the trifling consideration of one halfpenny. But"--he
paused with an expressive gesture of the hand--"I should have preferred
that this interesting truth had been proved by the son of some one
else."

"I think," replied Jack, "that our speculation hardly comes under the
category of commerce. It was not money that was at risk, but our own
lives."

Sir John's eyes hardened.

"Adventure," he suggested rather indistinctly, "travel and adventure.
There is a class of men one meets frequently who do a little exploring
and a great deal of talking. Faute de mieux, they do not hesitate to
interest one in the special pill to which they resort when indisposed,
and they are not above advertising a soap. You are not going to write a
book, I trust?"

"No. It would hardly serve our purpose to write a book."

"In what way?" inquired Sir John.

"Our purpose is to conceal the whereabouts of the Simiacine Plateau."

"But you are not going back there?" exclaimed Sir John unguardedly.

"We certainly do not intend to abandon it."

Sir John leant forward again with his two hands open on his knees,
thinking deeply.

"A married man," he said, "could hardly reconcile it with his conscience
to undertake such a perilous expedit