As a result of shock, or of meditation thereupon, or of contemplation of the lamentable life and death of Arsenio Valdez, Mr. Godfrey Frost was becoming himself again! I do not think that the Wesleyan strain had anything to do with the matter at this stage. It was the Frost business instinct that had revived, the business view. Godfrey might have counted the world well lost for Lucinda’s love—at all events, well risked; business-risked, so to put it. But not for the mere friendship, the hope of which I had held out to him. “In my place—situated as I am.” The phrases carried a good deal to me, a tremendous lot to him. The world—such a world as his—was not to be lost, or bartered, for less than a full recompense. After all, whoever did talk of losing his world for friendship? Most people think themselves meritorious if they lose a hundred pounds on that score. And Godfrey had in all likelihood—the precise figures were unknown—already dropped a good deal more than that, and had taken in return little but hard words and buffeting. No wonder the Frost instinct looked suspiciously at any further venture! Not of actual money, of course; that stood only as a symbol; and to be even an adequate symbol would have required immense multiplication. If a symbol were to be used in any seriousness, the old one served best—the old personification of all that he, in an hour of urgent impulse, had been willing to lose or to risk for Lucinda. “Well, my dear fellow,” I said urbanely, “there were always circumstances, to which we needn’t refer in detail, that made any intimate acquaintance between you and the Valdez’s—well, difficult. Affectation to deny it! I’ve even felt it myself; of course in a minor degree.” “Why a minor degree?” he asked rather aggressively. “If I’m Nina’s cousin, you’re Waldo’s!” “There’s all the difference,” I said decisively, though I was not at all prepared to put the difference into words. However, I made a weak and conventional effort: “Old Waldo’s so happy now that he can’t bear any malice——” He cut across the lame inadequacy of this explanation (not that there wasn’t a bit of truth in it). “I’m damned rich,” he observed moodily, “and everybody behaves to me as if I was damned important—except you and the Valdez’s, of course. But I’m not free. Let’s have a liqueur to wash down that coffee, shall we?” I agreed, and we had one. It was not a moment to refuse him creature comforts.