t, as he sat in his easy chair and thought over it all, the
one feeling predominant in his mind was that nothing mattered but
Betty--nothing really mattered but Betty.

In the meantime G. Selden was walking up Fifth Avenue, at once touched
and exhilarated by the stir about him and his sense of home-coming. It
was pretty good to be in little old New York again. The hurried pace of
the life about him stimulated his young blood. There were no street cars
in Fifth Avenue, but there were carriages, waggons, carts, motors, all
pantingly hurried, and fretting and struggling when the crowded state
of the thoroughfare held them back. The beautifully dressed women in
the carriages wore no light air of being at leisure. It was evident that
they were going to keep engagements, to do things, to achieve objects.

"Something doing. Something doing," was his cheerful self-congratulatory
thought. He had spent his life in the midst of it, he liked it, and it
welcomed him back.

The appointment he was on his way to keep thrilled him into an uplifted
mood. Once or twice a half-nervous chuckle broke from him as he tried to
realise that he had been given the chance which a year ago had seemed
so impossible that its mere incredibleness had made it a natural subject
for jokes. He was going to call on Reuben S. Vanderpoel, and he was
going because Reuben S. had made an appointment with him.

He wore his London suit of clothes and he felt that he looked pretty
decent. He could only do his best in the matter of bearing. He always
thought that, so long as a fellow didn't get "chesty" and kept his head
from swelling, he was all right. Of course he had never been in one of
these swell Fifth Avenue houses, and he felt a bit nervous--but Miss
Vanderpoel would have told her father what sort of fellow he was, and
her father was likely to be something like herself. The house, which had
been built since Lady Anstruthers' marriage, was well "up-town," and was
big and imposing. When a manservant opened the front door, the square
hall looked very splendid to Selden. It was full of light, and of rich
furniture, which was like the stuff he had seen in one or two special
shop windows in Fifth Avenue--places where they sold magnificent
gilded or carven coffers and vases, pieces of tapestry and marvellous
embroideries, antiquities from foreign palaces. Though it was quite
different, it was as swell in its way as the house at Mount Dunstan,
and there were gleam