left town this morning," Mr. Grisben was saying, with an
unexpected incisiveness of tone.

Mr. Lavington laid down his spoon and smiled interrogatively. "Oh,
facts--what _are_ facts? Just the way a thing happens to look at a given
minute...."

"You haven't heard anything from town?" Mr. Grisben persisted.

"Not a syllable. So you see.... Balch, a little more of that _petite
marmite_. Mr. Faxon... between Frank and Mr. Grisben, please."

The dinner progressed through a series of complicated courses,
ceremoniously dispensed by a prelatical butler attended by three
tall footmen, and it was evident that Mr. Lavington took a certain
satisfaction in the pageant. That, Faxon reflected, was probably
the joint in his armour--that and the flowers. He had changed the
subject--not abruptly but firmly--when the young men entered, but
Faxon perceived that it still possessed the thoughts of the two elderly
visitors, and Mr. Balch presently observed, in a voice that seemed to
come from the last survivor down a mine-shaft: "If it _does_ come, it
will be the biggest crash since '93."

Mr. Lavington looked bored but polite. "Wall Street can stand crashes
better than it could then. It's got a robuster constitution."

"Yes; but--"

"Speaking of constitutions," Mr. Grisben intervened: "Frank, are you
taking care of yourself?"

A flush rose to young Rainer's cheeks.

"Why, of course! Isn't that what I'm here for?"

"You're here about three days in the month, aren't you? And the rest of
the time it's crowded restaurants and hot ballrooms in town. I thought
you were to be shipped off to New Mexico?"

"Oh, I've got a new man who says that's rot."

"Well, you don't look as if your new man were right," said Mr. Grisben
bluntly.

Faxon saw the lad's colour fade, and the rings of shadow deepen under
his gay eyes. At the same moment his uncle turned to him with a renewed
intensity of attention. There was such solicitude in Mr. Lavington's
gaze that it seemed almost to fling a shield between his nephew and Mr.
Grisben's tactless scrutiny.

"We think Frank's a good deal better," he began; "this new doctor--"

The butler, coming up, bent to whisper a word in his ear, and the
communication caused a sudden change in Mr. Lavington's expression. His
face was naturally so colourless that it seemed not so much to pale as
to fade, to dwindle and recede into something blurred and blotted-out. He
half rose, sat down again and sent a rigid smi