“My dear, good boy,” Tatiana recriminated, “this is sheer morbidity. First of all, who are the many who, according to you, know that ‘Mr. Harrington’ was not ‘Mr. Harrington’? Jean and myself and the Abbé de Kerdren, Régis, old Garrassime, and possibly Marguerite de Plenhöel, although she has not mentioned your name or your presence to a living soul; but, of course, she saw you as you were being carried ashore. None will speak, rest assured; so think no more about it and remember that while there is life there is hope; that you are young, intelligent, gifted, and, moreover, extremely wealthy, since you have inherited during the past four years not only your father’s colossal fortune, but also your grandmother’s. This gives you immense opportunities to do good; to create interests of many sorts for yourself that will occupy your mind. I am not trying to overdose you with rose-colored views of a painful situation, but still--” She paused and finished her discourse by a very convincing little gesture.
“Yes; I dare say you are right,” Preston admitted; “but my money without me would do just as much good, provided I managed to pass it on to somebody who would take the trouble off my hands. Personally I am not a philanthrope, I am afraid.”
“Neither am I,” she retorted. “Organized charities are a horror to me. Don’t misunderstand what I say. I certainly admit that money left to hospitals, orphan-asylums, _crèches_, etc., etc., is well employed; but it has always seemed to me that one gold piece given to the truly deserving, from hand to hand, as by one human bring to another, so to speak, is far better than inscribing one’s name--almost invariably with the hope of its being published abroad--upon a list of so-called philanthropies.”
“I am entirely of your opinion, excepting that in order to discover the truly deserving it is needful to be up, about, and doing.”
“A faithful and fitting representative? Yes ... perhaps!”
“How many millions have you got?” she asked, laughingly, to cheer him up.
“Oh,” he said, immediately catching the spirit of her mood, “let me see--about fifty--that is in dollars, you understand.”
“Two hundred and fifty millions of francs! Good Lord! That’s a pleasing sum!”