d left him in the doorway, puzzled and uncomfortable.

At six that morning Dan, tip-toeing downstairs to warm his left-over
coffee and get his own breakfast, heard a voice from Willy Cameron's
room, and opened the door. Willy Cameron was sitting up in bed with
his eyes closed and his arms extended, and was concluding a speech to a
dream audience in deep and oratorical tones.

"By God, it is time the plain people know their power."

Dan grinned, and, his ideas of humor being rather primitive, he edged
his way into the room and filled the orator's sponge with icy water from
the pitcher.

"All right, old top," he said, "but it is also time the plain people got
up."

Then he flung the sponge and departed with extreme expedition.

CHAPTER XVI

It was not until a week had passed after Louis Akers' visit to the house
that Lily's family learned of it.

Lily's state of mind during that week had been an unhappy one. She
magnified the incident until her nerves were on edge, and Grace, finding
her alternating between almost demonstrative affection and strange
aloofness, was bewildered and hurt. Mademoiselle watched her secretly,
shook her head, and set herself to work to find out what was wrong. It
was, in the end, Mademoiselle who precipitated the crisis.

Lily had not intended to make a secret of the visit, but as time went
on she found it increasingly difficult to tell about it. She should, she
knew, have spoken at once, and it would be hard to explain why she had
delayed.

She meant to go to her father with it. It was he who had forbidden her
to see Akers, for one thing. And she felt nearer to her father than
to her mother, always. Since her return she had developed an almost
passionate admiration for Howard, founded perhaps on her grandfather's
attitude toward him. She was strongly partizan, and she watched her
father, day after day, fighting his eternal battles with Anthony,
sometimes winning, often losing, but standing for a principle like
a rock while the seas of old Anthony's wrath washed over and often
engulfed him.

She was rather wistful those days, struggling with her own perplexities,
and blindly reaching out for a hand to help her. But she could not bring
herself to confession. She would wander into her father's dressing-room
before she went to bed, and, sitting on the arm of his deep chair, would
try indirectly to get him to solve the problems that were troubling
her. But he was inarticulate and