Angela slipped in between the bed and the table, and sat down on the coverlet.
“You must not talk too long,” she said gently.
“Won’t you try some grapes?” Hugh said huskily.
Stephen laughed mirthlessly. “No.” To Mrs. Latham he said, “I’m almost done. There was something I wanted more than I wanted an aerial career,” he went on, looking Hugh full in the face—“more than you ever wanted anything in your life—or could want anything—or many men could. It was not for me. And I might have won it, if it hadn’t been for Uncle Dick. Oh! it wasn’t you who thwarted me—you needn’t think it was—it was he. Always he thwarted me. I did my best to thwart him in return. I wasn’t glad to hurt you, Hugh, truly I wasn’t—” For just an instant his voice softened and suspended. Then he went bitterly on, “You were in the way, and you had to go—that was all—but I’d very much rather it had been any one else. I owed Uncle Dick a good deal, and I tried to pay it. And I’d do it again.”
Hugh held out his hand timidly; it was in apology too. Stephen ignored it, and bent his eyes to the fire.
“Now,” he said, after a long, brooding pause, “you know the depth of my penitence. We’ll talk about something else.”
“We will,” Angela said briskly, but her voice shook. “You say you are going to succeed at the aircraft thing yet. Do you know how you are going to do it?”
“Well, then, I do. We’ve planned it all—Hugh and I.”
Stephen sat up in the bed, he shot her a glance, and then fixed his eyes on his brother. Hugh nodded and went horribly red.
“You are going to do it in South America. That’s the place, where you won’t be overlooked, and half your inventions and things stolen before you’ve perfected them. It’s going to be an enormous thing, our firm—just we three partners. Your brains, your control, my money—and a little from Hugh, and your own too, of course—and all ‘Bransby’s,’ influence and co-operation back of us. It will need a rare lot of capital. Well, it’s ready.”
Stephen paid no attention to her, but he said to his brother—
“Yes, Stevie—and jolly glad, and pleased—”
Stephen silenced him with a gesture. “Well, I don’t. I’d die first.”
“You’ll die after,” Mrs. Latham remarked.
She put her hand on his face. “You are going to do this for me. I’ve millions, and you are going to double them.”