your husband is concerned--what does he think of it?"

"I don't know. It makes no difference what he thinks of it," Adelle
replied.

"You will find that it does make a great difference," the trust officer
quickly rejoined, seizing upon Archie as a convenient weapon. He
thereupon discoursed upon the legal and moral rights of a husband in his
wife's property and warned Adelle solemnly that she was taking a
dangerous course in acting without Archie's consent. Archie doubtless
would have been much pleased. It seemed trying to Adelle, who had not
the least idea of ever again waiting upon Archie's consent about
anything, to have her marriage used against her in this fashion by the
trust company. They had done everything they could to keep Archie's
hands off the property, and now they gravely told her that it belonged
to Archie as well as to herself!

Mr. Smith continued to talk for some time longer, but Adelle was calmly
oblivious to what he was saying. She was thinking. It was clear to her
that there were objections to the simple method by which she had
expected to transfer a part of Clark's Field to its rightful owners, but
she had by no means abandoned her purpose, as the trust company
president thought. Like many forceful men whom President Smith very much
admired, she was no great respecter of law as such. What couldn't be
done in one way might in another, and she must now find out that other
way, which obviously she would not discover from the officers of the
Washington Trust Company. So she rose and pulled on her long gloves.

"I must think it over," she remarked thoughtfully, "and see what my
cousin, Mr. Clark, thinks about it. I will come in again in a few days."
And with a slight nod to the assembled gentlemen she passed out of the
president's private office.

Three disgusted gentlemen looked at each other after her departure. One
of them said the trite and stupid and untrue thing,--"Just like a
woman!"

Another reacted equally conventionally,--"She must be a little queer."

And the third--the president--vouchsafed,--"What she needs is a strong
hand to keep her straight."

All of which Adelle, like any self-respecting woman, might have
resented.

XLVI

Adelle passed through the marble banking-room of the trust company,
which once had been for her the acme of splendor, out upon the narrow
city street in considerable puzzlement. She did not know which way to
turn next, literally. She might consult