to!" she exclaimed.

"When?" he asked. And he fixed a night. He was proud of himself. Eagerly he
began to talk of opening nights at Wallack's. Roger and Judith, when they
were young, had been great first nighters there. And now it was Laura who
drew him out, and as he talked on she seemed to him to be smilingly trying
to picture it all.... "Now I'd better tell him," she thought.

"Do you remember Harold Sloane?" she asked a little strangely.

"No," replied her father, a bit annoyed at the interruption.

"Why--you've met him two or three times--"

"Have I?" The queer note in her voice made him look up. Laura had risen
from her chair.

"I want you to know him--very soon." There was a moment's silence. "I'm
going to marry him, dad," she said. And Roger looked at her blankly. He
felt his limbs beginning to tremble. "I've been waiting to tell you when we
were alone," she added in an awkward tone. And still staring up at her he
felt a rush of tenderness and a pang of deep remorse. Laura in love and
settled for life! And what did he know of the affair? What had he ever done
for her? Too late! He had begun too late! And this rush of emotion was so
overpowering that while he still looked at her blindly she was the first to
recover her poise. She came around the table and kissed him softly on the
cheek. And now more than ever Roger felt how old his daughter thought him.

"Who is he?" he asked hoarsely. And she answered smiling,

"A perfectly nice young man named Sloane."

"Don't, Laura--tell me! What does he do?"

"He's in a broker's office--junior member of the firm, Oh, you needn't
worry, dear, he can even afford to marry _me_."

They heard a ring at the front door.

"There he is now, I think," she said. "Will you see him? Would you mind?"

"See him? No!" her father cried.

"But just to shake hands," she insisted. "You needn't talk or say a word.
We've only a moment, anyway." And she went swiftly out of the room.

Roger rose in a panic and strode up and down. Before he could recover
himself she was back with her man, or rather her boy--for the fellow, to
her father's eyes, looked ridiculously young. Straight as an arrow,
slender, his dress suit irreproachable, the chap nevertheless was more than
a dandy. He looked hard, as though he trained, and his smooth and ruddy
face had a look of shrewd self-reliance. So much of him Roger fathomed in
the indignant cornered glance with which he welcomed him into the room.