mingled with cajolery. "But, please, Mr. Morton," she pleaded, "you
won't say anything about it, will you? Charles doesn't wish to have it
announced just yet, for some reason or another."

"No, certainly not, Mrs. Hamilton," Morton assured her. "We won't tell
of it."

"Thank you so much!" was the grateful response; and Cicily fairly
dazzled the puzzled gentlemen by the brilliancy of her smile. "You
know," she continued mournfully, "Charles did scold me so after you were
here that other time when I talked to you. He scolded me really
frightfully for talking so much.... It didn't do a bit of good my
telling him that I didn't say a thing. But I didn't, did I?" She asked
the question with the ingenuous air of an innocent child, which imposed
on the two men completely.

"Indeed, you didn't!" Morton declared with much heartiness, as he
darted a monitory glance toward Carrington. "Why, for a business woman,
I thought you a very model of discretion, Mrs. Hamilton. And so did
Carrington--eh, Carrington?"

"Exactly!" Carrington agreed under this urging of his master. "If all
women in business were like Mrs. Hamilton here, business would not be so
difficult."

Cicily felt the sneer in the words, but she deemed it the part of
prudence to conceal any resentment. On the contrary, she assumed a
hypocritical air of triumph.

"Good! I'll tell that to Charles," she declared, joyously. "You know
he's such a horribly suspicious person that he doesn't trust anyone."
Once again, she turned to Morton with an alluring smile. "Of course, he
ought to be very glad, indeed, to trust you, his father's oldest
friend."

"I hope that you told him that," Morton replied primly, albeit he was
hard put to it to prevent himself from chuckling aloud over the naivete
of this indiscreet young woman.

Cicily maintained her mask of guilelessness.

"Yes, indeed, I did!... He said that was why he didn't trust you."

Morton saw fit to change the rather delicate subject.

"It must be a matter of great satisfaction that you have at last won
this strike," he remarked, somewhat inanely.

"Of course, it is," Cicily agreed, with a renewal of her former
enthusiasm. "Oh, I'm so glad, because now we can pay our men their old
wages! That's how we won the strike, you know," she went on, with a
manner of simplicity that was admirably feigned; "just by giving in to
them. All we had to do was to give them what they wanted, and everything
was all settled right aw