must always be. Mr. Ashly Crane knew that this was the point
when his love-making should begin, but suddenly he felt that Adelle
Clark was a very difficult person to make love to.

"Perhaps you've been thinking of the man?" he opened clumsily.

She shook her head thoughtfully.

"No, I haven't."

"But you could love some one?"

"I suppose so," she answered in such a matter-of-fact tone that for the
moment he was baffled. The present situation, he decided, was
unfavorable for love-making, and searched desperately within for his
next words.

"I wonder what they look like," Adelle mused aloud.

"Who look like--husbands?"

"No, Edward's children--the other heirs," she explained.

"Perhaps there aren't any," he snapped.

And under his breath Mr. Ashly Crane consigned Edward S. Clark and all
his offspring to perdition.

XIX

Mr. Crane was a persistent person. Otherwise he would hardly have
arrived where he had in the Washington Trust Company. Having failed to
broach the great subject in the afternoon, he immediately made another
opportunity for himself by hustling Adelle, ahead of the others, into
his own cab for the return drive to the city, and then jumping in after
her and giving the driver the order to leave. It was very ill-bred and
he knew it, but he was determined not to bother about Miss Comstock any
longer. His vacation was very nearly at an end, and this would be his
last chance for another year if the ward was to remain in Europe as was
her present determination. He consoled himself with the thought that the
others had Adelle's car at their disposal, and gave the order to take a
roundabout road back to London. The driver needed but the suggestion to
plunge them into a maze of forgotten country roads where there were no
lights and no impeding traffic....

There are in general three ways in which to make love to a woman, young
or old: the deliberate, the impulsive, and the inevitable. Of the third
there is no occasion to speak here, as neither Ashly Crane nor Adelle
understood it. Of the remaining two the deliberate method of cautious,
persistent siege was more to the taste and the temperament of the
banker, but he was strictly limited in time. The Kaiser Nonsuch, on
which his passage was reserved, sailed in three days from Southampton,
and he must win within that brief period or put the matter over for a
whole year. And he judged that Adelle, under her present environment
with such an expert