The Profiteers. E. Phillips Oppenheim

Lady Dredlinton," Phipps said slowly. "I must confess that if you could regard me with a little more toleration, if you would accept at any rate a measure of my friendship, would endeavour, may I say, to adopt a more sympathetic attitude with regard to me, it would give me the deepest pleasure."

      Josephine shook her head.

      "Mr. Phipps," she said, "you have the name of being a very hard-headed and shrewd business man. You come here offering my husband's honour and your banking account. I could not possibly accept these things from a person to whom I can make no return. If you will let me know the exact amount of my husband's defalcation, I will try and pay it."

      "You cannot believe," he exclaimed almost angrily, "that I came here to take your money?"

      "Did you come here believing that I was going to take yours?" she asked.

      Peter Phipps, who knew men through and through and had also a profound acquaintance with women of a certain class, was face to face for once with a type of which he knew little. The woman who could refuse his millions, offered in such a manner, for him could have no real existence. Somewhere or other he must have blundered, he told himself. Or perhaps she was clever; she was leading him on to more definite things?

      "I came here, Lady Dredlinton," he said, "prepared to offer, if you would accept it, everything I possess in the world in return for a little kindness."

      Phipps had not heard the knock at the door, though he saw the change in

       Josephine's face. She rose to her feet with a transfiguring smile.

      "How lucky I am," she exclaimed, "to have a witness to such a wonderful offer!"

      Wingate paused for a moment in his passage across the room. His outstretched hand fell to his side. The expression of eagerness with which he had approached Josephine disappeared from his face. He confronted Phipps, who had also risen to his feet, as a right-living man should confront his enemy. There was a second or two of tense silence, broken by Phipps, who was the first to recover himself.

      "Welcome to London, Mr. Wingate," he said. "I was hoping to see you this morning in the City. This is perhaps a more fortunate meeting."

      "You two know each other?" Josephine murmured.