"Mr. Barslow," said she at last, "I have no apology to make to you; for you are my friend. And I have no feeling toward Mr. Elkins of which, in my secret heart, and so long as he knows nothing of it, I am not proud. To know him ... and love him may be death ... but it is honor!... I am sorry Josie is poor, because it is a hard thing for her; but more because I know he will be drawn to her in a stronger way by her poverty. Shake hands with me, Albert, and be jolly, I'm jollier, away down deep, than I've been for a long, long time; and I thank you for that!"
We shook hands warmly, like comrades, and passed down to her carriage together. At dinner she was vivacious as ever; but I was downcast. So much so that Mrs. Hinckley devoted herself to me, cheering me with a dissertation on "Sex in Mind." I asked myself if the atmosphere in which she had been reared had not in some degree contributed to the attitude of Antonia toward the expression to me of her regard for Jim.
So the Trescott estate matter was arranged. In a few days the boom was strengthened by newspaper stories of the purchase, by heavy financial interests, of the entire list of assets in the hands of the administrator.
"This immense deal," said the _Herald_, "is new proof of the desirability of Lattimore property. The Acme Investment Company, which will handle the properties, has bought for investment, and will hold for increased prices. It may be taken as certain that in no other city in the country could so large and varied a list of holdings be so quickly and advantageously realized upon."
This was cheering--to the masses. But to us it was like praise for the high color of a fever patient. Even while the rehabilitated Giddings thus lifted his voice in pæans of rejoicing, the lurid signals of danger appeared in our sky.
I have often wished that some sort of a business weather-chart might be periodically got out, showing conditions all over the world. It seems to me that with such a map one could forecast financial storms and squalls with an accuracy quite up to the weather-bureau standard.
Had we at Lattimore been provided with such a chart, and been reminded of the wisdom of referring to it occasionally, we might have saved ourselves some surprises. We should have known of certain areas of speculative high pressure in Australasia, Argentina, and South Africa, which existed even prior to my meeting with Jim that day in the Pullman smoking-room coming out of Chicago. These we should have seen changing month by month, until at the time when we were most gloriously carrying things before us in Lattimore, each of these spots on the other side of the little old world showed financial disturbances--pronounced "lows." We should have seen symptoms of storm on the European bourses; and we should have thought of the natural progress of the moving areas, and derived much benefit from such consideration. We should certainly have paid some attention to it, if we could have seen the black isobars drawn about London, when the great banking house of Fleischmann Brothers went down in the wreck of their South African and Argentine investments. But having no such chart, and being much engrossed in the game against the World and Destiny, we glanced for a moment at the dispatches, seeing nothing in them of interest to us, congratulated ourselves that we were not as other investors and speculators, and played on.