"Now that you have spent the monthly income," Val suggested as Rupert
added up a long column of minute figures scrawled across the first page
of his pocket note-book, "let's really get away from economics for one
evening. The surroundings suggest something more romantic than dollars
and cents. After all, when did a pirate ever show a saving disposition?
Would the first Roderick--"
"The Roderick who brought home the Luck?" Ricky laughed. "But he brought
home a fortune, too, didn't he, Rupert?"
Her brother relit his pipe. "Yes, but a great many lords came home from
the Crusades with their pockets filled. Sir Roderick de la Stone thought
the Luck worth his entire estate even after he was made Baron
Ralestone."
Ricky shivered delicately. "Not altogether nice people, those ancestors
of ours," she observed.
"No," Val grinned. "By rights this room should be full of ghosts instead
of the beat of just one. How many Ralestones died violently? Seven or
eight, wasn't it?"
"But the ones who died in England should haunt Lorne," argued Ricky,
half seriously.
"Well then, that sort of confines us to the crews of the ships our
great-great-great-grandfather scuttled," her brother replied.
"Rupert," Ricky turned and asked impulsively, "do you really believe in
the Luck?"
Rupert looked up at the empty niche. "I don't know--No, I don't. Not the
way that Roderick and Richard and all the rest did.
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