er
was looking at me inquiringly.

"I'm not a business man," I said, "and I'm afraid that my opinion isn't
worth much, but I think----"

I hesitated. Ascher's eyes were fixed on me, and there was a curiously
wistful expression in them. I could not understand what he wanted me to
say.

"I think," I said, "that Gorman's plan sounds feasible, that it ought to
work."

"But your own opinion of it?" said Ascher.

He spoke with a certain gentle insistency. I could not very well avoid
making some answer.

"We are able to judge for ourselves," he said, "whether it will work.
But the plan itself--what do you think of it?"

"Well," I said, "I'm a modern man. I have accepted all the ideas and
standards of my time and generation. I can hardly give you an opinion
that I could call my own, but if my father's opinion would be of any
use to you---- He was an old-fashioned gentleman, with all the rather
obsolete ideas about honour which those people had."

"He's dead, isn't he?" said Gorman.

"Oh, yes," I said. "He's been dead for fifteen years. Still I'm sure I
could tell you what he'd have said about this."

"I do not think," said Stutz, "that we need consider the opinion of Sir
James Digby's father, who has been dead for fifteen years."

"I quite agree with you," I said. "It would be out of date, hopelessly."

"But your own opinion?" said Ascher, still mildly insistent.

"Well," I said, "I've been robbed of my property--land in Ireland, Mr.
Stutz--by Gorman and his friends. Everybody says that they were quite
right and that I ought not to have objected; so I suppose robbery must
be a proper thing according to our contemporary ethics."

"And that is your opinion of the scheme?" said Ascher.

"Yes," I said. "I hope I've made myself clear. I think we are justified
in pillaging when we can."

"You Irish," said Ascher, "with your intellects of steel, your delight
in paradox and your reckless logic!"

Stutz was not interested in the peculiarities of the Irish mind. He went
back to the main point with a directness which I admired.

"This is not," he said, "the kind of business we care to do."

"Mr. Gorman," said Ascher, "we shall wait for Mr. Mildmay's report
on your brother's invention. If it turns out to be favourable, as I
confidently expect, we may have a proposal to lay before you. Our firm
cannot, you will understand, take shares in your company. That is not a
bank's business. But I myself, in my private capacit