anxious to pretend poverty and hide your
money-light beneath a bushel?"

"Mr. Gwynn is no humbug," returned Richard; "under my thumb, he acts for
me in business. I am saved a deal of bother at slight expense and
slighter risk. Now and then, of course, I find him absorbing some sly
hundreds. When he bought the _Daily Tory_, he substituted a pretended
agent between himself and Talon & Trehawke, and in that way sequestered
over eleven thousand dollars behind the mask of commissions. But I
always discover and rectify these discrepancies. And I forgive them,
too; for Mr. Gwynn was educated to a theory of perquisites, and such
little lapses as those _Daily Tory_ commissions are but the outcrop of
old habits too deeply rooted to be eradicated."

"But you present him as your patron--as the head of your house."

"There you're in the wrong," laughed Richard. "When I returned from
Europe bringing Mr. Gwynn, society seized upon him for its own. Society
went wild over Mr. Gwynn; it discovered in him treasures of patricianism
and a well-bred elegance. Since society insisted upon the enthronement
of Mr. Gwynn, it would have been impolite, nay narrow, on my part to
object. Besides, I recognized in it the essence of democracy and as an
American rejoiced. 'By all means,' said I, 'society shall have its
excellent way. I can give it little, but I can give it Mr. Gwynn.'"

Richard's old cynicism was for the moment restored, and the laughing
philosopher--who is only a laughing hyena in trousers and cutaway--shone
out in all a former Abderitish glory. In the brittle case of Mr. Bayard
the laughing cynic did not laugh alone; that gray eagle of the tape saw
much in Mr. Gwynn and his polite adventures to delight him. He declared
the situation to be a most justifiable sarcasm addressed, not against an
individual, but an age.

"It was," said Mr. Bayard, "a splendid vengeance upon the snobs. But
that doesn't explain," he continued, "why you were sedulous to hide your
millions from others--from Miss Harley, for a sample."

Richard braced himself and made a clean breast. He had been educated by
musty professors, visionaries, rusty creatures of theories and alcoves;
he had come to be as morbid as the atmosphere he was reared in on that
subject of his gold. It would corrupt whomsoever approached him. He,
Richard, would never know love or friendship--nothing better than a
world's greed would he know. Announce his millions, and he would have no
ex