“Go on. Teach me some more. I like learning.”
“There’s not much more to tell. We were not together long, John and I. It was like a story my father used to tease me with, when he was tired and I teased him to tell me stories. ‘I’ll tell you a story about Jack A’Manory, and now my story’s begun. I’ll tell you another about Jack and his brother, and now my story’s done.’ I was eighteen, nearly, when I was married. It was four years after that that John said good-by to his murderers and absconders. Just a year after he died in Hong Kong—cholera. That teased me some.” The pretty lips were quivering and Latham saw a tear pearl on the long lashes.
After a pause he said gently, “Will you ever give any one else his place, do you think?”
“John’s place? Never. No one could.” She did not add that there were other places that a man—the right man—might make in her heart, and that she was lonely. But the thought was clear in her mind, and it glanced through Latham’s.
“How long is it—since you were in Hong Kong?” he ventured presently.
Angela Hilary dimpled and laughed. “I’ll be twenty-eight next week.”
“And I was forty-seven last week.” And then he added earnestly, “Thank you for telling me.”
“Oh, I was glad to.” Neither referred to her confidence about her age, or thought that the other did.
At that moment “Mr. Pryde” was announced. Angela welcomed him effusively, brewed him fresh tea and plied him with molasses candy and hot ginger-bread.
Latham watched her; it was always pleasant to watch this woman, especially when plying some womanly craft, as now, but he spoke to Stephen. “I am glad to have this chance of offering you my congratulations, Pryde.”
Stephen raised a puzzled eyebrow. “Your congratulations?”
“I hear that since you have become the head of the house of Bransby you have done great things.”
“They tell me that you are the big man in the Aeroplane World, and that you are going to grow bigger. Perhaps success means nothing to you, but——”
“Success means everything to me, to every man worth his salt. The people who say it doesn’t are liars.”
“So, after all, you were right and Bransby was wrong.”
“Yes, I was right, and Uncle Dick was wrong. But as for my rising to great heights—well—after all, it is the house of Bransby that will reap the benefit. It was very trusting of Uncle Dick to leave me the management of the business, but Helen is the house of Bransby.”