mouth.

"No. What would have been the good?"

"Of course. Speculation--you bought heavily to sell on an expected
rise?"

"Yes."

There was something so even in Charley's manner and tone that Billy
misinterpreted it. It seemed hopeful that Charley was going to make the
best of a bad job.

"You see," Billy said eagerly, "it seemed dead certain. He showed me the
way the thing was being done, the way the company was being floated, how
the market in New York was catching hold. It looked splendid. I thought
I could use the money for a week or so, then put it back, and have a nice
little scoop, at no one's cost. I thought it was a dead-sure thing--and
I was hard up, and Kathleen wouldn't lend me any more. If Kathleen had
only done the decent thing--"

A sudden flush of anger swept over Charley's face--never before in his
life had that face been so sensitive, never even as a child. Something
had waked in the odd soul of Beauty Steele.

"Don't be a sweep--leave Kathleen out of it!" he said, in a sharp,
querulous voice--a voice unnatural to himself, suggestive of little use,
as though he were learning to speak, using strange words stumblingly
through a melee of the emotions. It was not the voice of Charley Steele
the fop, the poseur, the idlest man in the world.