seated herself on a straight-backed
chair near the door, although she had the air of being about to get up
again at any minute. It was not a surrender, not at all--but a parley, at
least.

"I really want to talk to you seriously, Bob," she said, and her voice
was serious. "I like you very much--I always have--and I want you to
listen seriously. All of us have friends. Some people--you, for
instance--have a great many. We have but one father." Her voice failed a
little at the word. "No friend can ever be the same to you as your
father, and no friendship can make up what his displeasure will cost you.
I do not mean to say that I shan't always be your friend, for I shall
be."

Young men seldom arrive at maturity by gradual steps--something sets them
thinking, a week passes, and suddenly the world has a different aspect.
Bob had thought much of his father during that week, and had considered
their relationship very carefully. He had a few precious memories of his
mother before she had been laid to rest under that hideous and
pretentious monument in the Brampton hill cemetery. How unlike her was
that monument! Even as a young boy, when on occasions he had wandered
into the cemetery, he used to stand before it with a lump in his throat
and bitter resentment in his heart, and once he had shaken his fist at
it. He had grown up out of sympathy with his father, but he had never
until now began to analyze the reasons for it. His father had given him
everything except that communion of which Cynthia spoke so feelingly. Mr.
Worthington had acted according to his lights: of all the people in the
world he thought first of his son. But his thoughts and care had been
alone of what the son would be to the world: how that son would carry on
the wealth and greatness of Isaac D. Worthington.

Bob had known this before, but it had had no such significance for him
then as now. He was by no means lacking in shrewdness, and as he had
grown older he had perceived clearly enough Mr. Worthington's reasons for
throwing him socially with the Duncans. Mr. Worthington had never been a
plain-spoken man, but he had as much as told his son that it was decreed
that he should marry the heiress of the state. There were other plans
connected with this. Mr. Worthington meant that his son should eventually
own the state itself, for he saw that the man who controlled the highways
of a state could snap his fingers at governor and council and legislature
and