succeed in restoring the Colonel's former engaging child-like trust that the bank was a sort of affectionate big brother.
"And if I meet your suggestion, sir, and dispose of the hotel property to this syndicate you speak of: exactly how much money would that leave me clear?" he inquired at last.
"It would pay the mortgages on the hotels, and the back interest, and the floating debts; and it would square your way for a fresh start at the ranch—that is, would catch you up on your interest, and leave you five or ten thousand."
"Five or ten thousand! For two hotels!" cried the Colonel.
He could not get over the shock of that. To all intents and purposes it seemed to him that he was selling two big modern hotels, with grounds, well furnished and in running order, both of which belonged to him personally without partnership, and all he was getting from the transaction was a miserable five or ten thousand dollars! He listened to Oliver Mills's careful explanations and understood them intellectually; he assented to the banker's conclusion that he had not really owned them for some time—a panicky thought flashed through his mind that perhaps in the same way he did not really own Corona del Monte, but he thrust it out as unthinkable—but in spite of it his instinct cried out as against a cold-blooded subversion of age-founded things. He spent the afternoon in that office; and when he left, his usual springy jauntiness was quenched. For the first time in his life he walked with his shoulders stooped. He drove back to Corona del Monte huddled over the reins trying to think it out.
He had known from the start that he would have to fall in with the banker's plans, but he hated to face it. The hotels meant so much to his large feeling of hospitality. He enjoyed every detail, from the first lordly segregating of the sheep from the goats at the weekly docking of the Santa Rosa to all the little personal touches of especial fruits and flowers and gallant attentions that the Colonel loved to bestow. He would miss the hotels; miss them cruelly. Instinctively he knew he would never go back as an outsider to those beloved halls where he had reigned. That one pleasant human aspect of his life would be by one stroke cut off. It was like a bereavement.
