ot see his face, but she knew from the tones of his voice that the
enthusiasm of the moment had cooled.

Lucy shifted her chair, lifted her head, and looked up into his eyes.
She was always entrancing from this point of view: the upturned
eyelashes, round of the cheeks, and the line of the throat and swelling
shoulders were like no other woman's he knew.

"I don't want you to go, Max," she said in the same coaxing tone of
voice that Ellen might have used in begging for sugar-plums. "Just let
the mortgage and old Morton and everybody else go. Stay here with me."

Max straightened up and threw out his chest and a determined look came
into his eyes. If he had had any doubts as to his departure Lucy's
pleading voice had now removed them.

"No, can't do it," he answered in mock positiveness. "Can't 'pon my
soul. Business is business. Got to see Morton right away; ought to have
seen him before." Then he added in a more serious tone, "Don't get
worried if I stay a day or two longer."

"Well, then, go, you great bear, you," and she rose to her feet and
shook out her skirts. "I wouldn't let you stay, no matter what you
said." She was not angry--she was only feeling about trying to put her
finger on the particular button that controlled Max's movements.
"Worried? Not a bit of it. Stay as long as you please."

There WAS a button, could she have found it. It was marked "Caution,"
and when pressed communicated to the heir of Walnut Hill the
intelligence that he was getting too fond of the pretty widow and that
his only safety lay in temporary flight. It was a favorite trick of
his. In the charting of his course he had often found two other rocks
beside Scylla and Charybdis in his way; one was boredom and the other
was love. When a woman began to bore him, or he found himself liking
her beyond the limit of his philosophy, he invariably found relief in
change of scene. Sometimes it was a sick aunt or a persistent lawyer or
an engagement nearly forgotten and which must be kept at all hazards.
He never, however, left his inamorata in either tears or anger.

"Now, don't be cross, dear," he cried, patting her shoulder with his
fingers. "You know I don't want to leave you. I shall be perfectly
wretched while I'm gone, but there's no help for it. Morton's such a
fussy old fellow--always wanting to do a lot of things that can,
perhaps, wait just as well as not. Hauled me down from Walnut Hill half
a dozen times once, and after all the