h so that the young man
fastened his eyes on the banker's, wondering at the cause.

"She was worth a lot to Bob, sir," replied Holcomb slowly. "They had
grown up together."

CHAPTER TWO

That same afternoon the banker passed through the polished steel
grille of his new home by means of a flat key attached to a plain gold
chain.

The house, like its owner, had a certain personality of its own,
although it lacked his simplicity; its square mass being so richly
carved that it seemed as if the faintest stroke of the architect's
soft pencil had made a dollar mark. So vast, too, was its baronial
hall and sweeping stairway in pale rose marble, that its owner might
have entered it unnoticed, had not Blakeman, the butler, busying
himself with the final touches to a dinner table of twenty covers,
heard his master's alert step in the hall and hurried to relieve him
of his coat and hat. Before, however, the man could reach him, Thayor
had thrown both aside, and had stepped to a carved oak table on which
were carefully arranged ten miniature envelopes. He bent over them for
a moment and then turning to the butler asked in an impatient tone:

"How many people are coming to dinner, Blakeman?"

"Twenty, sir," answered Blakeman, his face preserving its habitual
Sphinx-like immobility.

"Um!" muttered Thayor.

"Can, I get you anything, sir?"

"No, thank you, Blakeman. I have just left the Club."

"A dinner of twenty, eh?" continued Thayor, as Blakeman disappeared
with his coat and hat--"our fourth dinner party this week, and Alice
never said a word to me about it." Again he glanced at the names
of the men upon the ten diminutive envelopes, written in an angular
feminine hand; most of them those of men he rarely saw save at his own
dinners. Suddenly his eye caught the name upon the third envelope from
the end of the orderly row.

"Dr. Sperry again!" he exclaimed, half aloud. He opened it and his
lips closed tight. The crested card bore the name of his wife. As he
dropped it back in its place his ear caught the sound of a familiar
figure descending the stairway--the figure of a woman of perhaps
thirty-five, thoroughly conscious of her beauty, whose white arms
flashed as she moved from beneath the flowing sleeves of a silk
tea-gown that reached to her tiny satin slippers.

She had gained the hall now, and noticing her husband came slowly
toward him.

"Where's Margaret?" Thayor asked, after a short pause during whic