cigar and carefully lit a cigarette. Roger noticed again
how young the chap was, and marriage seemed so ridiculous! All this
feverish trouble was for something so unreal!

"Well, sir," the candidate blurted forth, "I guess I'd better come right to
the point. Mr. Gale, I want to marry your daughter."

"Laura?"

"Yes." Roger cursed himself. Why had he asked, "Laura?" Of course it was
Laura! Would this cub be wanting Deborah?

"Well, my boy," he said thickly. "I--I wish I knew you better."

"So do I, sir. Suppose we begin." The youth took a quick pull at his
cigarette. He waited, stirred nervously in his seat. "You'll have some
questions to ask, I suppose--"

"Yes, there are questions." Roger had risen mechanically and was slowly
walking the room. He threw out short gruff phrases. "I'm not interested in
your past--I don't care about digging into a man--I never have and I never
will--except as it might affect my daughter. That's the main question, I
suppose. Can you make her happy?"

"I think so," said Sloane, decidedly. Roger gave him a glance of
displeasure.

"That's a large order, young man," he rejoined.

"Then let's take it in sections," the youngster replied. Confound his
boyish assurance! "To begin with," he was saying, "I rather think I have
money enough. We'd better go into that, hadn't we?"

"Yes," said Roger indifferently. "We might as well go into it." Of course
the chap had money enough. He was a money maker. You could hear it in his
voice; you could see it in his jaw, in his small aggressive blonde
moustache. Now he was telling briefly of his rich aunt in Bridgeport, of
the generous start she had given him, his work downtown, his income.

"Twenty-two thousand this year," he said. "We can live on that all right, I
guess."

"You won't starve," was the dry response. Roger walked for a moment in
silence, then turned abruptly on young Sloane.

"Look here, young man, I don't want to dig," he continued very huskily.
"But I know little or nothing of what may be behind you. I don't care to
ask you about it now--unless it can make trouble."

"It can't make trouble." At this answer, low but sharp, Roger wheeled and
shot a glance into those clear and twinkling eyes. And his own eyes gleamed
with pain. Laura had been such a little thing in the days when she had been
his pet, the days when he had known her well. What could he do about it?
This was only the usual thing. But he felt suddenly sick of life.