un over. And
you, too, with that smooth tongue of yours."

Farnum laughed. "Jeff's pretty solid. He may ditch the train, sir."

"No!" roared Powers. "He'll be flung into the ditch." He turned abruptly
to Frome. "Peter, take me to a room where I can talk to this young man.
I need him."

"'Come into my little parlor,' said the spider to the fly."

They wheeled as at a common rein to the sound of the young mocking
voice. Alice Frome had come in unnoticed and was standing in the doorway
smiling at them. The effect she produced was demurely daring. The long
lines of her slender sylph-like body, the girlishness of her golden
charm, were vigorously contradicted in their suggestion of shyness by
the square tilted chin and the challenge in the dancing eyes.

"Alice," admonished her father with a deprecatory apology in his voice
to his brother-in-law.

Powers knit his shaggy brows in a frown not at all grim. The young woman
smiled back confidently. She could go farther with him than anybody else
in the world could, and she knew it. For he recognized in her vigorous
strength of fiber a kinship of the spirit closer than that between
him and his own daughter. An autocrat to the marrow, it pleased him to
recognize her an exception to his rule. Valencia was also an exception,
but in a different way.

"Have you any remarks to make, Miss Frome?" he asked.

"Oh, I've made it," returned the girl unabashed. She turned to James and
shook hands with him. "How do you do, Mr. Farnum? I see you are going to
be tied to Uncle Joe's kite, too."

Was there in her voice just a hint of scorn? James did not know. He
laughed a little uneasily.

"Shall I be swallowed up alive, Miss Frome?"

"You think you won't, but you will. He always gets what he wants."

For all the warmth and energy of youth in her there was a vivid
spiritual quality that had always made a deep appeal to James. He sensed
the something fine and exquisite she breathed forth and did reverence to
it.

"And what does he want now?" the young man parried.

"He wants YOU."

"Unless you would like him yourself, Alice," her uncle countered.

The color washed into her cheeks. "Not just now, thank you. I was merely
giving him a friendly warning."

"I'm awfully obliged to you. I'll be on my guard," laughed James.

He stepped across to the lounge to make his farewell to Mrs. Van Tyle.

"You'll come again," she said in a low voice.

"Whenever the gallery is open--if I am s