are
honestly trying, in the face of tremendous difficulties, to protect
innocent stockholders as well as to conduct a corporation in the
interests of the people at large, and for their general prosperity. Be
charitable, young man, and judge not hastily."

Years before, when poor Sarah Austen had adorned the end of his table,
Hilary Vane had raised his head after the pronouncement of grace to
surprise a look in his wife's eyes which strangely threw him into a white
heat of anger. That look (and he at intervals had beheld it afterwards)
was the true presentment of the soul of the woman whose body was his. It
was not--as Hilary Vane thought it--a contempt for the practice of
thanking one's Maker for daily bread, but a contempt for cant of one who
sees the humour in cant. A masculine version of that look Mr. Flint now
beheld in the eyes of Austen Vane, and the enraging effect on the
president of the United Railroads was much the same as it had been on his
chief counsel. Who was this young man of three and thirty to agitate him
so? He trembled, though not visibly, yet took Austen's hand mechanically.

"Good day, Mr. Vane," he said; "Mr. Freeman will help you to find your
horse."

The thin secretary bowed, and before he reached the door into the passage
Mr. Flint had opened another at the back of the room and stepped out on a
close-cropped lawn flooded with afternoon sunlight. In the passage Austen
perceived a chair, and in the chair was seated patiently none other than
Mr. Brush Bascom--political Duke of Putnam. Mr. Bascom's little agate
eyes glittered in the dim light.

"Hello, Austen," he said, "since when have you took to comin' here?"

"It's a longer trip from Putnam than from Ripton, Brush," said Austen,
and passed on, leaving Mr. Bascom with a puzzled mind. Something very
like a smile passed over Mr. Freeman's face as he led the way silently
out of a side entrance and around the house. The circle of the drive was
empty, the tea-party had gone--and Victoria. Austen assured himself that
her disappearance relieved him: having virtually quarrelled with her
father, conversation would have been awkward; and yet he looked for her.

They found the buggy and Pepper in the paved courtyard of the stables. As
Austen took the reins the secretary looked up at him, his mild blue eyes
burning with an unsuspected fire. He held out his hand.

"I want to congratulate you," he said.

"What for?" asked Austen, taking the hand in s