oung patron, who
recognized the merit of his work. They spent hours together elaborating
the plot of "Phantom Love" and discussing every detail of its
construction. Occasionally on Saturday night Mr. Martel would mention
quite confidentially to Quin that, owing to some delayed payments, he was
a little pressed for ready money and that a small loan would be
appreciated. This request invariably resulted in an elaborate Sunday
dinner, capped with a couple of bottles of Haut Sauterne in which Mr.
Martel took the precaution of drinking everybody's health twice over.

Ten days after the Easter party, when Quin had almost despaired of seeing
Eleanor at all, he found her car parked in front of the house when he
returned in the evening. Mounting the front steps two at a time, he
opened the door with his latch-key, then paused with his hand still on
the knob. Queer sounds were coming from the sitting-room--sounds of a
man's agitated voice, broken by sobs. Undeterred by any sense of
delicacy, Quin pushed open the door and bolted in.

Mr. Martel was sitting in the arm-chair in an attitude _King Lear_ might
have envied. Every line of his face and figure suggested unmitigated
tragedy. Even the tender ministrations of Eleanor Bartlett who knelt
beside him, failed to console him or to stem the tide of his
lamentations.

"What's the matter?" cried Quin in alarm. "What has happened?"

Papa Claude, resting one expressive hand on Eleanor's head, extended the
other to Quin.

"Come in, my boy, come in," he said brokenly. "You are one of us: nothing
shall be kept from you in this hour of great affliction. I am ruined,
Quinby--utterly, irrevocably ruined!"

"But how? What's happened?"

"It's grandmother!" exclaimed Eleanor, struggling to her feet and
speaking with dramatic indignation. "She's written him a letter I'll
never forgive--never! I don't care if the money _is_ due me. I don't
want it. I won't have it! What is six thousand dollars to me if it turns
Papa Claude out in the street?"

"But here--hold on a minute!" said Quin. "What's all the racket about?"

"It's about money," Mr. Martel roused himself to explain--"the grossest
and most material thing in the world. Years ago Eleanor's father and I
entered into a purely personal arrangement by which he advanced me a few
thousand dollars in a time of temporary financial depression, and as a
mere matter of form I put up this house as security. Had the dear lad
lived, nothing more w