no; and he doesn't seem inclined to marry. But he is quite
young; perhaps he may, later on in life, Mr. Dyke."

The elderly clerk straightened his mouth. "Matter of taste--and
policy. Gives solidity,--position;--and is an expense and a
responsibility." Mr. Dyke himself was well known to be the husband of
an idolized wife, and the father of a despotic family.

"He never had the advantage of woman's influence in his childhood, you
know. His poor mother died in giving him and his sister birth; and the
sister was lost,--stolen away, two or three years later. He does not
appreciate woman at her true value," murmured MacGentle.

"Stolen away? His sister died in infancy,--so I understood, sir,"
said the clerk, whose versions of past events were apt to differ from
the President's.

But the President--perhaps because he was conscious that his memory
regarding things of recent occurrence was treacherous--was abnormally
sensitive as to the correctness of his more distant reminiscences.

"O no, she was stolen,--stolen by her nurse, just before Thor Helwyse
went to Europe, I think," said he.

"Beg your pardon, sir," said Mr. Dyke, with an iron smile;
"died,--burnt to death in her first year,--yes, sir!"

"Mr. Dyke," rejoined MacGentle, dignifiedly, lifting his chin high
above his stock, "I have myself seen the little girl, then in her
third year, pulling her brother's hair on the nursery floor. She was
dark-eyed,--a very lovely child. As to the burning, I now recollect
that when the house in Brooklyn took fire, the child was in danger,
but was rescued by her nurse, who herself received very severe
injuries."

Mr. Dyke heaved a long, deliberate sigh, and allowed his eyes to
wander slowly round the room, before replying.

"You are not a family man, Mr. MacGentle, sir! Don't blame you, sir!
Your memory, perhaps--But no matter! The nurse who stole the child
was, I presume, the same who rescued her from the fire?"

Mr. Dyke perhaps intended to give a delicately ironical emphasis to
this question, but his irony was apt to be a rather unwieldy and
unmistakable affair. The truth was, he was a little staggered by the
President's circumstantial statement; whence his deliberation, and his
not entirely pertinent rejoinder about "a family man."

"And why not the same, sir? I ask you, why not the same?" demanded Mr.
MacGentle, with slender imperiousness.

But, by this time, Mr. Dyke had thought of a new argument.

"The little girl