"

Lapham wheeled about in his chair and turned his burly back on his
visitor, who sat wholly unmoved.

"There are some parties," he began, with a dry tranquillity ignoring
Lapham's words, as if they had been an outburst against some third
person, who probably merited them, but in whom he was so little
interested that he had been obliged to use patience in listening to his
condemnation,--"there are some English parties who have been making
inquiries in regard to those mills."

"I guess you're lying, Rogers," said Lapham, without looking round.

"Well, all that I have to ask is that you will not act hastily."

"I see you don't think I'm in earnest!" cried Lapham, facing fiercely
about. "You think I'm fooling, do you?" He struck his bell, and
"William," he ordered the boy who answered it, and who stood waiting
while he dashed off a note to the brokers and enclosed it with the
bundle of securities in a large envelope, "take these down to Gallop &
Paddock's, in State Street, right away. Now go!" he said to Rogers,
when the boy had closed the door after him; and he turned once more to
his desk.

Rogers rose from his chair, and stood with his hat in his hand. He was
not merely dispassionate in his attitude and expression, he was
impartial. He wore the air of a man who was ready to return to
business whenever the wayward mood of his interlocutor permitted.
"Then I understand," he said, "that you will take no action in regard
to the mills till I have seen the parties I speak of."

Lapham faced about once more, and sat looking up into the visage of
Rogers in silence. "I wonder what you're up to," he said at last; "I
should like to know." But as Rogers made no sign of gratifying his
curiosity, and treated this last remark of Lapham's as of the
irrelevance of all the rest, he said, frowning, "You bring me a party
that will give me enough for those mills to clear me of you, and I'll
talk to you. But don't you come here with any man of straw. And I'll
give you just twenty-four hours to prove yourself a swindler again."

Once more Lapham turned his back, and Rogers, after looking
thoughtfully into his hat a moment, cleared his throat, and quietly
withdrew, maintaining to the last his unprejudiced demeanour.

Lapham was not again heard from, as Walker phrased it, during the
afternoon, except when the last mail was taken in to him; then the
sound of rending envelopes, mixed with that of what seemed suppressed
swearing