The Marquis had listened with a shrewdly attentive eye upon the speaker's face. The nervous affection of his eyelids gave him now a minute of blinking leisure in which to frame his comment. “I have not heard that my shares are worth fifteen pounds,” he said then, with a direct, meaning little smile.
“No,” Thorpe laughed, leaning comfortably back in his chair. “That's what I want to talk to you about. You see, when the Company was started, it was impossible to foresee that this dealing in our ordinary shares would swamp everything else. If things had taken their usual course, and we had paid our attention to Mexico instead of to the London Stock Exchange, my deferred vendor's shares, two thousand of which you hold, would by this time be worth a good bit. As it is, unfortunately, they are outside of the deal. They have nothing to do with the movement of the ordinary shares. But of course you understand all that.”
Lord Chaldon assented by an eloquent nod, at once resigned and hopeful.
“Well--that is contrary to all my expectations--and intentions,” Thorpe resumed. “I don't want you to suffer by this unlooked-for change in the shape of things. You hold two thousand shares--only by accident they're the wrong kind of shares. Very well: I'll make them the right kind of shares. I'll have a transfer sent to you tomorrow, so that you can return those vendor's shares to me, and in exchange for them I'll give you two thousand fully-paid ordinary shares. You can sell these at once, if you like, or you can hold them on over one more settlement, whichever you please.”
“This is very munificent,” remarked Lord Chaldon, after an instant's self-communion. His tone was extremely gracious, but he displayed none of the enthusiastic excitement which Thorpe perceived now that he had looked for. The equanimity of Marquises, who were also ex-Ambassadors, was evidently a deeper-rooted affair than he had supposed. This elderly and urbane diplomat took a gift of thirty thousand pounds as he might have accepted a superior cigar.
A brief pause ensued, and was ended by another remark from the nobleman: “I thought for the moment of asking your advice--on this question of selling,” he continued. “But it will be put more appropriately, perhaps, in this way: Let me leave it entirely in your hands. Whatever you do will be right. I know so little of these things--and you know so much.”