"_Let_ me! There wasn't a man in the mess who didn't beg me to stay on! The Duke sent for me, and argued for half an hour. He promised me a staff appointment. He said some awfully decent things about my past services. I was glad of that... I said, `It's no good, sir, I can't face the prospect of being Colonel of the regiment, and not being able to afford as much as my own subs.' We went over it again and again, and he lost his temper at last and called me a fool, but I stuck to it--" Cornelia drew a sharp breath of excitement. "You _did_ resign--for money? In spite of all! For only that?" "It's a very big `only,' Miss Briskett. You don't know how it feels to have your income suddenly reduced by two-thirds." "Oh, don't I just! I know how it feels to have it wiped clean away. I guess my Poppar's dropped about as much in one slump as any man in the States!" cried Cornelia, with the true American's pride in size, be it for good or ill. She did not feel it necessary to state that the lost fortune had been more than retrieved, for one of the very few points on which she found herself in complete agreement with her aunt, was the suppression of her own wealth. She had no wish to be judged from a monetary standpoint, and Poppar's fame had not travelled across the ocean. He was just an ordinary everyday millionaire, with a modest little income of from three to four hundred a day; not a real, genuine high-flyer, with a thousand an hour! "I had to give up my frills and fixings, but I held on like grim death to the things that mattered.--I guess there's something wrong about your army, if a man's got to have a fortune before he can be an officer!" "A good many people are with you there, Miss Briskett, but unfortunately that does not alter the fact." "Then--what did you do after that?" "Cleared out! I sold my uniform for eighty pounds!"--he laughed again, the same sore laugh--"and gave my orderly about a dozen suits of ordinary clothes. The only thing I kept was my sword. I had ten swords hung on my walls, used by ten generations in succession--I couldn't give that up. ... An old chum was going out ranching to the wildest part of California. He asked me to come with him, and I jumped at it. I wanted to get out of the country--away from it all. If I'd seen the regiment riding through the streets, I should have gone mad! ... We sailed within a few weeks..."