would have
been content with the farmhouse under the hill where his gardener lived.
You could not fool Mr. Flint on a horse or a farm, and he knew to a dot
what a railroad was worth by travelling over it. Like his
governor-general and dependent, Mr. Hilary Vane, he had married a wife
who had upset all his calculations. The lady discovered Mr. Flint's
balance in the bank, and had proceeded to use it for her own
glorification, and the irony of it all was that he could defend it from
everybody else. Mrs. Flint spent, and Mr. Flint paid the bills; for the
first ten years protestingly, and after that he gave it up and let her go
her own gait.

She had come from the town of Sharon, in another State, through which Mr.
Flint's railroad also ran, and she had been known as the Rose of that
place. She had begun to rise immediately, with the kite-like adaptability
of the American woman for high altitudes, and the leaden weight of the
husband at the end of the tail was as nothing to her. She had begun it
all by the study of people in hotels while Mr. Flint was closeted with
officials and directors. By dint of minute observation and reasoning
powers and unflagging determination she passed rapidly through several
strata, and had made a country place out of her husband's farm in
Tunbridge, so happily and conveniently situated near Leith. In winter
they lived on Fifth Avenue.

One daughter alone had halted, for a minute period, this progress, and
this daughter was Victoria--named by her mother. Victoria was now
twenty-one, and was not only of another generation, but might almost have
been judged of another race than her parents. The things for which her
mother had striven she took for granted, and thought of them not at all,
and she had by nature that simplicity and astonishing frankness of manner
and speech which was once believed to be an exclusive privilege of
duchesses.

To return to Fairview. Victoria, after sharing her five o'clock luncheon
with her dogs, went to seek her father, for the purpose (if it must be
told) of asking him for a cheque. Mr. Flint was at Fairview on the
average of two days out of the week during the summer, and then he was
nearly always closeted with a secretary and two stenographers and a
long-distance telephone in two plain little rooms at the back of the
house. And Mr. Hilary Vane was often in consultation with him, as he was
on the present occasion when Victoria flung open the door. At sight of
Mr.