“Let us suppose this scheme to be as prosperous as its best friends can wish it, Mr. Hankes; that you all--I mean you great folk, who are directors, chairmen, secretaries, and so forth--become as rich and powerful as you desire, see your shares daily increasing in value, your speculations more and more lucrative, what becomes of the people--the poor man--all this while?” “Why, of course he participates in all these successes; he grows rich too; he sells what he has to sell at a better market, obtains higher wages for his labor, and shares all our prosperity.” “Granted. But who is to teach him the best use of this newly acquired prosperity? You, and others like you, have your tastes already formed; the channels are already made in which your affluence is to run: not so with him; abundance may--nay, it will--suggest waste, which will beget worse. Who are to be his guides,--who his examples?” “Oh, as to that, his increase of fortune will suggest its own appropriate increase of wants. He will be elevated by the requirements of his own advancing condition, and even if he were not, it is not exactly any affair of ours; we do our part when we afford him the means of a higher civilization.” “I don't think so. I suspect that not alone do you neglect a duty, but that you inflict a wrong. But come, I will take another alternative; I will suggest--what some are already predicting--that the project will not prove a success.” “Who says that?” cried Hankes, hastily, and in his haste forgetting his habitual caution of manner. “Many have said it. Some of those whose opinions I am accustomed to place trust in, have told myself that the speculation is too vast,--disproportioned to the country, undertaken on a scale which nothing short of imperial resources could warrant--” “But surely you do not credit such forebodings?” broke he in. “It is of little consequence how far _I_ credit them. I am as nothing in the event. I only would ask, What if all were to fail?--what if ruin were to fall upon the whole undertaking, what is to become of all those who have invested their entire fortunes in the scheme? The great and affluent have many ventures,--they trust not their wealth to one argosy; but how will it be with those who have embarked their all in one vessel?” Mr. Hankes paused, as if to reflect over his reply, and she continued: “It is a question I have already dared to address to Mr. Dunn himself. I wrote to him twice on the subject. The first time I asked what guarantee could be given to small shareholders,--those, for instance, who had involved their whole wealth in the enterprise. He gave me no answer. To my second application came the dry rejoinder that I had possibly forgotten in whose service I was retained; that I drew my resources from the Earl of Glengariff, and not from the peasantry, whose advocate I had constituted myself.” “Well?” cried Hankes, curious to hear what turn the correspondence took.