losed the door behind them, and the other door into the darkened
dining room. He even took a precautionary glance out of the window of
the porch. And these movements, which ordinarily might have aroused her
curiosity, if not her alarm, she watched with a profound indifference.
He took a stand before the Japanese screen in front of the fireplace,
thrust his hands in his pockets, cleared his throat, and surveyed her
from her white shoulders to the gold-embroidered tips of her slippers.

"I'm leaving for the West in the morning, Honora. If you've made any
arrangements for me on Sunday, you'll have to cancel them. I may be gone
two weeks, I may be gone a month. I don't know."

"Yes," she said.

"I'm going to tell you something those fellows in the smoking room
to-night did their best to screw out of me. If you say anything about
it, all's up between me and Wing. The fact that he picked me out to
engineer the thing, and that he's going to let me in if I push it
through, is a pretty good sign that he thinks something of my business
ability, eh?"

"You'd better not tell me, Howard," she said.

"You're too clever to let it out," he assured her; and added with a
chuckle: "If it goes through, order what you like. Rent a house on
Bellevue Avenue--any thing in reason."

"What is it?" she asked, with a sudden premonition that the thing had a
vital significance for her.

"It's the greatest scheme extant," he answered with elation. "I won't go
into details--you wouldn't understand'em. Mr. Wing and some others have
tried the thing before, nearer home, and it worked like a charm. Street
railways. We buy up the little lines for nothing, and get an interest in
the big ones, and sell the little lines for fifty times what they cost
us, and guarantee big dividends for the big lines."

"It sounds to me," said Honora, slowly, "as though some one would get
cheated."

"Some one get cheated!" he exclaimed, laughing. "Every one gets
cheated, as you call it, if they haven't enough sense to know what their
property's worth, and how to use it to the best advantage. It's a case,"
he announced, "of the survival of the fittest. Which reminds me that if
I'm going to be fit to-morrow I'd better go to bed. Mr. Wing's to take
me to New York on his yacht, and you've got to have your wits about you
when you talk to the old man."

Volume 6.

CHAPTER VI. CLIO, OR THALIA?

According to the ordinary and inaccurate method of measuring ti