wash out a word of it._"

"About that letter of your uncle's? I take it you have no one to
suggest?"

Thomas Carden glanced anxiously at the son in whom he had so great a
confidence, and who was the secret pride of his eyes, the only love of
his austere, hard-working life.

The two were a great contrast to one another. The older man was short
and slight, with the delicate, refined, spiritual face so often seen
in the provincial man of business belonging to that disappearing
generation of Englishmen who found time to cultivate the things of the
mind as well as the material interests of life; a contrast, indeed, to
the tall, singularly handsome, alert-looking man whom he had just
addressed, and whose perfect physical condition made him appear
somewhat younger than his thirty-two years.

And yet, in spite or perhaps because of this contrast between them,
the two were bound in the closest, if not exactly in the most
confidential, ties of affection. And, as a matter of course, they were
partners in the great metal-broking business of Josh. Carden, Thomas
Carden and Son, which had been built up by three generations of
astute, self-respecting citizens of Birmingham.

It was Easter Monday, and the two men were lingering over breakfast,
in a way they seldom allowed themselves time to do on ordinary
week-days, in the finely proportioned, book-lined dining-room of one
of those spacious old houses which remain to prove that the suburb of
Edgbaston was still country a hundred years ago.

Theodore Carden looked across the table meditatively. He had almost
forgotten his uncle's letter, for, since that letter had been read and
cursorily discussed, he and his father had been talking of a matter
infinitely more important to them both. The matter in question was the
son's recent engagement and coming marriage, a marriage which was a
source of true satisfaction to the older man. His father's unselfish
joy in the good thing which had befallen him touched Theodore Carden
keenly, for the niche occupied in most men's minds by their intimate
feminine circle was filled in that of the young man by the diminutive
figure of the senior partner of Carden and Son.

As is perhaps more often the case than those who despise human nature
believe, men sometimes have the grace to reverence and admire those
qualities in which they know themselves to be deficient. Such a man
was the younger Carden. To-day the depths had been stirred, and he let
his m