it was. All the misery of his
predicament was distilled into the short silence that preceded his
answer: "Yes--I think so."

"Well, I guess I can double it for you." Moffatt spoke with an air of
Olympian modesty. "Anyhow, I'll try. Only don't tell the other girls!"

He proceeded to develop his plan to ears which Ralph tried to make alert
and attentive, but in which perpetually, through the intricate concert
of facts and figures, there broke the shout of a small boy racing across
a suburban lawn. "When I pick him up to-night he'll be mine for good!"
Ralph thought as Moffatt summed up: "There's the whole scheme in a
nut-shell; but you'd better think it over. I don't want to let you in
for anything you ain't quite sure about." "Oh, if you're sure--" Ralph
was already calculating the time it would take to dash up to Clare Van
Degen's on his way to catch the train for the Fairfords'.

His impatience made it hard to pay due regard to Moffatt's parting
civilities. "Glad to have seen you," he heard the latter assuring him
with a final hand-grasp. "Wish you'd dine with me some evening at my
club"; and, as Ralph murmured a vague acceptance: "How's that boy of
yours, by the way?" Moffatt continued. "He was a stunning chap last time
I saw him.--Excuse me if I've put my foot in it; but I understood you
kept him with you...? Yes: that's what I thought.... Well, so long."

Clare's inner sitting-room was empty; but the servant, presently
returning, led Ralph into the gilded and tapestried wilderness where she
occasionally chose to receive her visitors. There, under Popple's effigy
of herself, she sat, small and alone, on a monumental sofa behind a
tea-table laden with gold plate; while from his lofty frame, on the
opposite wall Van Degen, portrayed by a "powerful" artist, cast on her
the satisfied eye of proprietorship.

Ralph, swept forward on the blast of his excitement, felt as in a dream
the frivolous perversity of her receiving him in such a setting instead
of in their usual quiet corner; but there was no room in his mind for
anything but the cry that broke from him: "I believe I've done it!"

He sat down and explained to her by what means, trying, as best he
could, to restate the particulars of Moffatt's deal; and her manifest
ignorance of business methods had the effect of making his vagueness
appear less vague.

"Anyhow, he seems to be sure it's a safe thing. I understand he's in
with Rolliver now, and Rolliver practica