ough our Board--without which your coup wouldn't have
been worth a farthing. You were enthusiastically grateful to me then. In
the excitement of the moment you promised me a quarter of all you should
make. 'WE ARE BOTH RICH MEN!' I remember those very words of yours. They
have never been out of my mind. We discussed the things that we would
each do, when we came into this wealth. It was taken for granted in all
our talk that your making money meant also my making money. That was the
complete understanding--here in London, and while you were at my house.
You know it as well as I do. And I refuse to suppose that you seriously
intend to sit there and pretend that you meant to give me nothing but an
armful of waste paper. It would be too monstrous!"

Thorpe rapped with his nails on the desk, to point the force of his
rejoinder: "How do you account for the fact, my Lord"--he gave his
words a chillingly scornful precision of utterance--"that I distinctly
mentioned 400,000 vendor's shares of mine, 100,000 of which I promised
to turn over to you? Those were the specific terms, were they not? You
don't deny it? Then what are you talking about?"

"I account for it in this way"--said Plowden, after a moment's baffled
reflection: "at that time you yourself hadn't grasped the difference
between the two classes of shares. You thought the vendor's shares would
play a part in the game. Ah! I see I've hit the mark! That was the way
of it!--And now here, Thorpe! Let all that's been said be bye-gones! I
don't want any verbal triumph over you. You don't want to wrong me--and
yourself too--by sticking to this quibble about vendor's shares. You
intended to be deuced good to me--and what have I done that you should
round on me now? I haven't bothered you before. I came today only
because things are particularly rotten, financially, just now. And I
don't even want to hold you to a quarter--I leave that entirely to you.
But after all that's been said and done--I put it to you as one man to
another--you are morally bound to help me out."

"How do you mean?--'all that's been said and done'?" Thorpe asked the
question in some confusion of moods. Perhaps it was the ethical force
of Lord Plowden's appeal, perhaps only a recurring sense of his earlier
affection for the man--but for the moment he wavered in his purpose.

The peer flushed a little, as he looked at the floor, revolving possible
answers to this query. His ear had been quick to seize th