ing it with
destruction.

"You seem to have been to the dressmaker yourself. How's your bank
account, Phil? I suppose your uncle will have to be more careful about
overdrafts now that he has a national bank."

"Oh, I'm not broke. And"--suddenly serious--"I must tell you something,
daddy. I've been waiting for a chance to ask you if you cared; it didn't
seem right not to ask you; and, of course, if you mind, I _won't_."

He smiled at her earnestness, her unusual indirection. She was immensely
grown up; there were new manifestations of her otherwiseness. He noted
little sophisticated tricks of manner that reminded him vaguely of some
one else.

"Amy says it's all right for me to do it, but that I must ask you; and
mamma says that, too."

Her preluding roused apprehensions. What might not have happened in
these weeks that Phil had spent with Lois? He observed his daughter
with a new intentness. She drew a handkerchief from her sleeve and
touched it lightly, with an un-Phil-like gesture to her nose; and an
instant later, with an almost imperceptible movement of her head,
resettled her hat. She had acquired--quite unconsciously he did not
question--a new air. She was his old Phil, but the portrait had been
retouched here and there, and was reminiscent in unaccountable ways of
some one else very like and very different.

"Yes, Phil, come out with it," he said, finding her eyes upon him in a
wide, unseeing gaze--and that, too, he now remembered. She had taken on,
as young girls do, the superficial graces and innocent affectations of
an older person. Such perfectly natural and pardonable imitation is
induced by admiration; and Lois had been a woman of fascinations in old
times! He had no reason for believing that she had changed; and it had
been clear to him that first day of Lois's return that she had laid
strong hold upon Phil's imagination.

"Mamma wants to give me some money: she has already done some nice
things for me. She bought this hat and suit; but she wants to do more."

Kirkwood frowned. Lois had no right to come back and steal Phil away
from him. He was at once jealous, suspicious. He, too, had assumed that
Lois's return had not been voluntary; that she had come back of
necessity and flung herself upon Amzi's charity. It would be quite like
her to try to tempt Phil with a handful of trinkets.

"It isn't likely that she has much to give you; but before you accept
anything of importance you should be sure