trust company would soon be absolved from all responsibility for its
ward, and it might be as well to let matters rest as they were for the
present, if the drafts from Paris did not become too outrageous, which,
of course, was exactly what Mr. West and the other officers wished to
do--nothing.

Hereafter Mr. Ashly Crane must honor any draft that Adelle might make,
no matter how "outrageous" it was. (The drafts came fluttering across
the ocean on every steamer for ever-increasing amounts until the young
heiress was living at the rate of nearly forty thousand dollars a year.)
The banker might wonder how a young girl, still nominally in school,
could get away with so much money. He might fear that her extravagance
would become a habit and carry her even beyond the limits of her large
means. But he could not say a word. Miss Comstock, indeed, had put him
in a sorry situation for a full-grown banker. The more he thought about
the unfortunate episode of his love-making, the more he cursed himself.
President West, whose special protege the young banker had always been,
held very strict notions about honor and the relation of the officers of
the company to its clients. In Adelle's case--that of a minor entrusted
to them by the probate court--the president would feel doubly incensed
if he suspected that any officer had attempted to take advantage of her
unprotected and inexperienced youth. So Mr. Ashly Crane walked softly
these days and promptly honored Adelle's drafts.

XXI

Of course this was precisely what Pussy Comstock had been clever enough
to see when, in the idiom with which Mr. Crane was familiar, she had had
the trust officer "on the carpet" and "called him down" on that
memorable occasion of the day after. He might tell her, as he had
recklessly done, that her own relation to the rich girl depended solely
upon his consent, and hint coarsely that he knew well enough the ground
of her extreme interest in Adelle's fate. Miss Comstock did not take the
trouble to deny either fact. She merely smiled at the blustering banker,
and intimated that the president and directors of the trust company
might have views about the conduct of its trust officer towards their
ward. She had heard much of the prominent social position of President
West, and if she were not mistaken Mr. Nelson Glynn, the father of one
of her girls, was a director in the bank. Mr. Crane wilted under this
fine treatment, and departed as we have seen t