ner on purpose to
meet him." This was true.

"And you have done so well, too, I hear. Your friends are very pleased
to know of your success," she said graciously.

Keith smilingly admitted that he had had, perhaps, better fortune than
he deserved; but this Mrs. Yorke amiably would by no means allow.

"Mrs. Wentworth--not Louise--I mean the elder Mrs. Wentworth--was
speaking of you. You and Norman were great friends when you were boys,
she tells me. They were great friends of ours, you know, long before
we met you."

He wondered how much the Wentworths' indorsement counted for in securing
Mrs. Yorke's invitation. For a good deal, he knew; but as much credit as
he gave it he was within the mark.

It was only her environment. She could no more escape from that than if
she were in prison. She gauged every one by what others thought, and she
possessed no other gauge. Yet there was a certain friendliness, too, in
Mrs. Yorke. The good lady had softened with the years, and at heart she
had always liked Keith.

Most of her conversation was of her friends and their position. Alice
was thinking of going abroad soon to visit some friends on the other
side, "of a very distinguished family," she told Keith.

When Keith left the Lancaster house that night Alice Lancaster knew that
he had wholly recovered.

CHAPTER XIX

WICKERSHAM AND PHRONY

Keith returned home and soon found himself a much bigger man in New
Leeds than when he went away. The mine opened on the Rawson property
began to give from the first large promises of success.

Keith picked up a newspaper one day a little later. It announced in
large head-lines, as befitted the chronicling of such an event, the
death of Mr. William Lancaster, capitalist. He had died suddenly in his
office. His wife, it was stated, was in Europe and had been cabled the
sad intelligence. There was a sketch of his life and also of that of his
wife. Their marriage, it was recalled, had been one of the "romances" of
the season a few years before. He had taken society by surprise by
carrying off one of the belles of the season, the beautiful Miss Yorke.
The rest of the notice was taken up in conjectures as to the amount of
his property and the sums he would be likely to leave to the various
charitable institutions of which he had always been a liberal patron.

Keith laid the paper down on his knee and went off in a revery. Mr.
Lancaster was dead! Of all the men he had met in New York