t--not for two days?"

"It might be that," said the Scotchman cautiously.

Two days. Forty-eight hours, almost, since she had left him in that
harem! And McLean had not seen him. Of course there might be other
friends who had and McLean might know of them.

"I'm afraid I'll have to see you," she said desperately. "It's
rather important about Jack Ryder--and if I could just talk with you
a minute--this afternoon--?"

"I have no appointment for three fifteen," McLean told her
concisely.

Evidently he expected her to call at the Bank.... He was used to
being called on.... "Shall I come--?" she began.

"I can see you at three fifteen," McLean reassured her, and she
repeated "Three fifteen," with an odd vibration in her voice.

"I wonder," she murmured, "if I came at three ten--or three
twenty--?"

* * * * *

But she didn't. She was humorously careful to make it exactly a
quarter past the hour when she left her cab before McLean's
official looking residence and stepped into the tiled entrance.

She had no very clear notion of Andrew McLean except that he was, as
Jack had said, Scotch, single, and skeptical, that he was Jack's
intimate friend and an official sort of banker--and the word banker
had unconsciously prepared her for stout dignity and middle age.

She was not at all prepared for the lean, sandy-haired, rather
abrupt young man who came forward from the depths of the gratefully
cool reception room, and after a nervous hand clasp waved her to a
chair.

He was still holding her card, and as he glanced covertly at it she
recalled that she had given him no name over the telephone and that
he had known her only by the time of her appointment. Decidedly she
must have made an odd impression!

Well, he could see for himself now, she thought, a trifle defiantly.
Certainly he was taking stock of her out of those shrewd swift gray
eyes of his. He could see that she was, well--certainly a nice girl!

As a matter of fact McLean could see that she was considerably more.
Rather disconcertingly more! It was not often that such white-clad
apparitions, piquant of face and coppery of hair, teased the eyes in
his receiving room.

"You wanted to see me--?" he offered mechanically.

"Perhaps you have heard Jack Ryder speak of me--of Jinny Jeffries?"
began the girl, determined to put the affair on a sound social
footing as soon as possible.

McLean considered and, in honesty, shook his