"It is Planefield who is interested in the lands, if I remember rightly," suggested the professor. "Oh, Planefield?" Richard replied, carelessly. "Well, more or less. He is given to interesting himself in things, and, by Jove!" he added with a laugh, "this promises to be a good thing to be interested in. I shouldn't mind if I"-- "My dear Richard," interposed the professor, "allow me to advise you not to do so. You'll really find it best. Such things rarely end well." Richard laughed again. "My dear Professor," he answered, with much good-humor, "you may rely upon me. I haven't any money of my own." "And if you had money?" said the professor. "I think I should risk it. I really do. Though why I should say risk, I hardly know. There is scarcely enough risk to make it exciting." He was very sanguine, and once or twice became quite brilliant on the subject. The great railroad, which was to give the lands an enormous value, was almost an established fact; everything was being laid in train: a man influenced here, a touch given there, a vigorous move made in this direction, an interest awakened in that, and the thing was done. "There isn't a doubt of the termination," he said, "not a doubt. It's a brilliant sort of thing that is its own impetus, one might say, and the right men are at work for it, and the right wom--" "Were you going to say women?" asked Tredennis, when he pulled himself up somewhat abruptly. "Well, yes," Richard said, blithely. "After all, why not? I must confess to finding the fact lend color and vivacity to the thing. And the delightful cleverness the clever ones show is a marvellous power for or against a thing, though I think the feminine tendency is to work for a thing, not against it." "I should like to know," said Tredennis, "how they begin it." For a moment he thought he did not know why he asked the question; but the self-delusion did not last long. He felt an instant later that he did know, and wished that he did not. "In nine cases out of ten," Richard replied, giving himself up at once to an enjoyable analysis of the subject,--"in nine cases out of ten it is my impression they begin with almost entire lack of serious intention, and rarely, if ever, even in the end, admit to themselves that they have done what they are accused of. Given a clever and pretty woman whose husband or other male relative needs her assistance: why should she be less clever and pretty in the society of one political dignitary than in that of another, whose admiration of her charms may not be of such importance? I suppose that is the beginning, and then come the sense of power and the fascination of excitement. What woman does not like both? What woman is better and more charming than Bertha, and Bertha does not hesitate to admit, in her own delightful way, that there must have been a fascination in the lives of those historical charmers before whom prime ministers trembled, and who could make and unmake a cabinet with a smile."