friend who made it his business to betray them. The day was rare when he
made an inquiry concerning her amusements or the manner of them. Women
were in his eyes just so many agreeable decorations for the tables at
which men dined. Of their mental capacity he had no opinion whatever,
and it was a common jest for him to declare their brain power
consistently inferior to that of the male animal.

"There has been no woman financial genius since the world began," he
would observe, and if those who contradicted him named the arts, he
waved them aside. "What is art when finance is before us?" That Anna
should amuse herself was well and proper. He wished her to marry well
that he might have spoken of "my daughter, Lady Anna"--not with pride as
most men would speak, but ironically as one far above such petty titles
and able from his high place to deride them.

Of her daily life, it must be confessed that he knew very little. A
succession of worthy if incompetent dependants acted the chaperones part
for him and satisfied his conscience upon that score. He heard of her
at this social function or at that, and was glad that she should go. Men
would say, "There's a catch for you--old Gessner's daughter; he must be
worth a million if he's worth a penny." Her culpable predisposition
toward that pleasant and smooth-tongued rascal, Willy Forrest, annoyed
him for the time being but was soon forgotten. He believed that the man
would not dare to carry pursuit farther, and if he did, the remedy must
be drastic.

"I will buy up his debts and send him through the Court," Gessner said.
"If that does not do, we must find out his past and see where we can
have him. My daughter may not marry as I wish, but if she marries a
jockey, I have done with her." And this at hazard, though he had not the
remotest idea who Forrest really was and had not taken the trouble to
find out. When the man ceased to visit "Five Gables" he forgot him
immediately. He was the very last person in all London whom he suspected
when Anna, upon the day following his return from Paris, asked that they
might have a little talk together and named the half-hour immediately
before dinner for that purpose. He received her in his study, whither
Fellows had already carried him a glass of sherry and bitters, and being
in the best of good humor, he frankly confessed his pleasure that she
should so appeal to him.

"Come in, Anna, come in, my dear. What's the matter now--been gettin