“I’m glad you believe that, Doctor Mary.”

“But I can’t deal with you on that basis.  It’s even difficult to be friends on that basis—­and certainly impossible to be partners.”

“I never suggested that we should be partners over the money,” Beaumaroy put in quickly.

“No.  But I’m suggesting now—­as you did before—­that we should be partners—­in a secret, in Mr. Saffron’s secret.”  She smiled again as she added, “You can manage it all, I know, if you like.  I’ve unlimited confidence in your ingenuity—­quite unlimited.”

“But none at all in my honesty?”

“You’ve got an honesty; but I don’t call it a really honest honesty.”

“All this leads up to—­the Radbolts!” declared Beaumaroy with & gesture of disgust.

“It does.  I want your word of honor—­given to a friend—­that all that money—­all of it—­goes to the Radbolts, if it legally belongs to them.  I want that in exchange for the certificate.”

“A hard bargain!  It isn’t so much that I want the money—­though I must remark that in my judgment I have a strong claim to it; I would say a moral claim but for my deference to your views, Doctor Mary.  But it isn’t mainly that.  I hate the Radbolts getting it, just as much as the old man would have hated it.”

“I have given you my—­my terms,” said Mary.

Beaumaroy stood looking down at her, his hands in his pockets.  His face was twisted in a humorous disgust.  Mary laughed gently.  “It is possible to—­to keep the rules without being a prig, you know, though I believe you think it isn’t.”

“Including the sack in the water-butt?  My sack, the sack I rescued?”

“Including the sack in the water-butt.  Yes, every single sovereign!” Though Mary was pursuing the high moral line, there was now more mischief than gravity in her demeanor.

“Well, I’ll do it!” He evidently spoke with a great effort.  “I’ll do it!  But, look here, Doctor Mary, you’ll live to be sorry you made me do it.  Oh, I don’t mean that that conscience of yours will be sorry.  That’ll approve, no doubt, being the extremely conventionalized thing it is.  But you yourself, you’ll be sorry, or I’m much mistaken in the Radbolts.”

“It isn’t a question of the Radbolts,” she insisted, laughing.

“Oh yes, it is, and you’ll come to feel it so.”  Beaumaroy was equally obstinate.

Mary rose.  “Then that’s settled, and we needn’t keep Captain Alec waiting any longer.”

“How do you know that I sha’n’t cheat you?” he asked.

“I don’t know how I know that,” Mary admitted.  “But I do know it.  And I want to tell you—­”

She suddenly felt embarrassed under his gaze; her cheeks flushed, but she went on resolutely: 

“To tell you how glad, how happy, I am that it all ends like this; that the poor old man is free of his fancies and his fears, beyond both our pity and our laughter.”

“Aye, he’s earned rest, if there is to be rest for any of us!”