“And you will let me help?”

“Oh, we must get at the facts first.”  He caught her hands in his with sudden energy.  “As you say, when Paul’s safe there won’t be another bother left!”

XXXIV

The means of raising the requisite amount of money became, during the next few weeks, the anxious theme of all Ralph’s thoughts.  His lawyers’ enquiries soon brought the confirmation of Clare’s surmise, and it became clear that—­for reasons swathed in all the ingenuities of legal verbiage—­Undine might, in return for a substantial consideration, be prevailed on to admit that it was for her son’s advantage to remain with his father.

The day this admission was communicated to Ralph his first impulse was to carry the news to his cousin.  His mood was one of pure exaltation; he seemed to be hugging his boy to him as he walked.  Paul and he were to belong to each other forever:  no mysterious threat of separation could ever menace them again!  He had the blissful sense of relief that the child himself might have had on waking out of a frightened dream and finding the jolly daylight in his room.

Clare at once renewed her entreaty to be allowed to aid in ransoming her little cousin, but Ralph tried to put her off by explaining that he meant to “look about.”

“Look where?  In the Dagonet coffers?  Oh, Ralph, what’s the use of pretending?  Tell me what you’ve got to give her.”  It was amazing how his cousin suddenly dominated him.  But as yet he couldn’t go into the details of the bargain.  That the reckoning between himself and Undine should be settled in dollars and cents seemed the last bitterest satire on his dreams:  he felt himself miserably diminished by the smallness of what had filled his world.

Nevertheless, the looking about had to be done; and a day came when he found himself once more at the door of Elmer Moffatt’s office.  His thoughts had been drawn back to Moffatt by the insistence with which the latter’s name had lately been put forward by the press in connection with a revival of the Ararat investigation.  Moffatt, it appeared, had been regarded as one of the most valuable witnesses for the State; his return from Europe had been anxiously awaited, his unreadiness to testify caustically criticized; then at last he had arrived, had gone on to Washington—­and had apparently had nothing to tell.

Ralph was too deep in his own troubles to waste any wonder over this anticlimax; but the frequent appearance of Moffatt’s name in the morning papers acted as an unconscious suggestion.  Besides, to whom else could he look for help?  The sum his wife demanded could be acquired only by “a quick turn,” and the fact that Ralph had once rendered the same kind of service to Moffatt made it natural to appeal to him now.  The market, moreover, happened to be booming, and it seemed not unlikely that so experienced a speculator might have a “good thing” up his sleeve.