nk it is an absurd idea."

"Why do you call it absurd?" returned Mrs. Varrick. "It is perfectly
natural."

Hubert turned on her in a rage so great that it fairly appalled her.

"Why did you permit this sort of thing to go on, mother?" he cried. "It
is all your fault. You are accountable for it, I say."

Mrs. Varrick rose from her seat and looked haughtily at her son, her
heart beating with great, stifling throbs. In all the years of their
lives they had never before exchanged one cross word with each other,
and in that moment she hated, with all the strength of her soul, the
girl who had sown discord between them, and she wished that Heaven had
stricken the girl dead ere her son had looked upon her face.

"I am sure it is nothing to you or to me whom Jessie Bain chooses to
fall in love with," she answered, coldly. "You forget yourself in
reproaching _me_ with it, my son," and with these words she swept from
the room.

The door had barely closed after her ere Hubert threw himself down into
the nearest chair, covering his face with his hands.

He had loved Gerelda Northrup as few men love in a life-time, but with
the belief that she had eloped with another, growing up in his heart, he
had been able to stifle that love, root it from his heart, blossom and
branch, with an iron will, until at last he knew if he came face to face
with Gerelda she would never again have the power to thrill his heart
with the same passion.

And, sitting there, he was face to face with the truth--that his heart,
in all its loneliness, had gone out to Jessie Bain in the rebound, and
he knew that life would never be the same to him if she were to prefer
another to himself.

He rang the bell sharply, and in response to the summons one of the
servants soon appeared.

"Send the architect--the young man whom you will find in the new western
wing of the house--to me at once. Tell him to bring his drawings with
him."

Hubert Varrick paced nervously up and down the library until the young
man entered the room.

"You sent for me, Mr. Varrick," he said, with a smile on his frank,
handsome face, "and I made haste to come to you."

"I wish to inspect your drawings," he said, tersely, as he waved the
young man to a seat.

Frank Moray laid them down upon the table. There was something in
Varrick's manner that startled him, for he had always been courteous and
pleasant to him before.

Varrick ran his eyes critically over the pieces of card-b