the letter?" This
was very demurely said.

"Yes. Of course, I wrote him not to come. I preferred that he should not
come."

Could she have but seen Lois's face!

"Oh, you did!"

"Yes. I want no hypocrites around me." Her head was up and her cap was
bristling. "I came very near telling him so, too. I told him that I had
it from good authority that he had not behaved in altogether the most
gentlemanly way--consorting openly with a hussy on the street! I think
he knows whom I referred to."

"But, Aunt Abby, I do not know that she was. I only heard she was,"
defended Lois.

"Who told you?"

"Mr. Wickersham."

"Well, _he_ knows," said Miss Abigail, with decision. "Though I think he
had very little to do to discuss such matters with you."

"But, Aunt Abby, I think you had better have let him come. We could have
shown him our disapproval in our manner. And possibly he might have some
explanations?"

"I guess he won't make any mistake about that. The hypocrite! To sit up
and talk to me as if he were a bishop! I have no doubt he would have
explanation enough. They always do."

CHAPTER XXIII

GENERAL KEITH VISITS STRANGE LANDS

Just then the wheel turned. Interest was awaking in England in American
enterprises, and, fortunately for Keith, he had friends on that side.

Grinnell Rhodes now lived in England, dancing attendance on his wife,
the daughter of Mr. Creamer of Creamer, Crustback & Company, who was
aspiring to be in the fashionable set there.

Matheson, the former agent of the Wickershams, with whom Ferdy had
quarrelled, had gone back to England, and had acquired a reputation as
an expert. By one of the fortuitous happenings so hard to account for,
about this time Keith wrote to Rhodes, and Rhodes consulted Matheson,
who knew the properties. Ferdy had incurred the Scotchman's implacable
hate, and the latter was urged on now by a double motive. To Rhodes, who
was bored to death with the life he was leading, the story told by the
Wickershams' old superintendent was like a trumpet to a war-horse.

Out of the correspondence with Rhodes grew a suggestion to Keith to come
over and try to place the Rawson properties with an English syndicate.
Keith had, moreover, a further reason for going. He had not recovered
from the blow of Miss Brooke's refusal to let him visit Lois. He knew
that in some way it was connected with his attention to Terpsichore; he
knew that there was a misunderstanding, and felt that W