The Colonel drank his thick coffee from its little metal cup with undeniable and undenied pleasure. He was not hypocritical, and he never canted. His only son lay in a large bedroom of this luxurious suite, maimed and hardly conscious, and whether he would live or die no one knew. But the Colonel had never wept over Medway in the past and he was not going to weep now. He drank his coffee leisurely, and when it was done Mahomet took salver and cup away. Rising, the Colonel walked to one of the windows and stood looking out at a bougainvillæa-covered wall, a shaggy eucalyptus tree, and a seated beggar, fearful to the eye. It was afternoon, and they had been in Alexandria since eight o'clock. "I sent a cable to your grandmother. The doctors think he's holding his own, but I don't know. It looks pretty bad. They've got a nurse from a hospital here,--two, in fact,--and that man Thomson is invaluable.... I've seen, too, this morning, before they let me into the room, his wife's brother. It seems that he was in London at the time, and came on and has very properly waited here for our arrival. We walked through the Place Mahomet Ali, and he took me to a very good club, where we sat and talked.... Her will--it's rather curious. I suppose Medway, if he lives, will be disappointed. And yet, with care, he'll have enough." The Colonel laughed, rather grimly. "We'd think in Virginia, that a million was a good livelihood, but standards are changing, and doubtless he's been feeling many times that amount between his fingers. It occurred to me that they must have quarrelled. It's like a woman to fling off and do a thing like that hastily. Her brother says, however, that he believes they were really happy together. He fancies that she had some feminine scruple or other as to the way her first husband obtained his wealth,--as the world goes, entirely honourable transactions, I believe,--and that she had an idea of 'restoring' it. She made this last will in London, just before they started on this long trip that's ended so. It's been read. There's a string of bequests to servants and so on. She leaves just one million, well invested, to Medway. The rest, and it's an enormous rest, goes into a fund, for erecting model lodging-houses and workmen's dwellings. Philanthropy mad!" said the Colonel. "Her brother's got, I understand, some millions of his own, and he could afford to smile. Also, he's been supposing for a year that it would all go to Medway. Well, that's where Medway is--if he lives. Fifty thousand or so a year," said the Colonel, regarding the beggar, "is not an income to be despised. I should be happy if I saw, each year, in clear money, an eighth as much."