e streets. She loves me,
she cannot play this vile trick on me. Her heart is pure. You cannot make
me believe that she isn't honest and fair and loyal. I tell you now, once
and for all, that I will not stand idly by and see this vile sacrifice
made in order to--"

"Rawson," interrupted Mrs. Tresslyn, looking beyond him in the direction
of the door, "Doctor Thorpe is going. Will you give him his hat and coat?"
She had pressed a button beside the mantelpiece, and in response to the
call, the butler stood in the doorway. "Good day, Braden. I am sorry that
Anne is unable to see you to-day. She--"

"Good day, Mrs. Tresslyn," he choked out, controlling himself with an
effort. "Will you tell her that I shall call to-morrow?"

She smiled. "When do you expect to return to London? I had hoped to have
you stay until after the wedding."

His smile was more of an effort than hers. "Thanks. My grandfather has
expressed the same hope. He says the affair will not be complete without
my presence at the feast. To-morrow, at this hour, I shall come to see
Anne. Thank you, Rawson."

CHAPTER II

His gaze swept the long, luxurious drawing-room, now filled with the
shadows of late afternoon. A sigh that ended in an unvoiced imprecation
escaped him. There was not an object in the room that did not possess for
him a peculiar claim of intimacy. Here he had dreamed of paradise with
Anne, and here he had built upon his hopes,--a staunch future that demanded
little of the imagination. He could never forget this room and all that it
had held for him.

But now, in that brief, swift glance, he found himself estimating the cost
of all the treasures that it contained, and the price that was to be paid
in order that they might not be threatened. These things represented
greed. They had always represented greed. They had been saved out of the
wreck that befell the Tresslyn fortunes when Anne was a young girl
entering her teens, the wreck that destroyed Arthur Tresslyn and left his
widow with barely enough to sustain herself and children through the years
that intervened between the then and the now.

He recalled that after the wreck had been cleared up, Mrs. Tresslyn had a
paltry twenty-five thousand a year on which to maintain the house that,
fortuitously, had been in her name at the time of the smash. A paltry sum
indeed! Barely enough to feed and clothe one hundred less exacting
families for a year; families, however, with wheelbarrows