ce. Darkest suspicions were
thrown upon its solvency. The names of other banks, colossal
institutions, were linked under the same awful rumors. The morrow would
see a run on a dozen banks such as the generation had not witnessed. He
hailed a taxicab and hurried uptown. Drake had told him that everything
depended upon the Atlantic Trust. Now that this had gone under did this
mean his absolute ruin? Patsie was already waiting for him as he drew up
before the great gray stone mansion. She flung herself in his arms,
trembling and physically unnerved. He was afraid that she was going to
collapse completely and began solicitously to whisper in her ear many
deceptive words of hope and comfort.

"It may not be so bad. Your father--have you seen your father? How do
you know what he has done? Perhaps he has come to some agreement this
afternoon. Perhaps he has saved himself by some bold stroke. I believe
him capable of anything."

She stopped the futile flow of words with her fingers across his lips.

"Oh, how happy we were this afternoon," she said, for the moment almost
breaking down. But immediately the Spartan courage which was at the
bottom of her character prevailed. She drew herself up, saying so
quietly that he was surprised:

"Bojo, we mustn't deceive ourselves. This is the end, I know it.
Whatever is to come we must help immediately."

"Yet I still feel, I can't help it, that something may have happened. He
may have been able to do something to-day."

"I wish I could feel so," she said sadly.

With her hand still in his she led the way into the great library, which
seemed a region of mystifying and gloomy things, lit only by the lights
of the desk lamps.

"All we can do is to wait," she said.

"Have you seen your mother?" he said at last.

She shook her head. "It is useless. I have no influence over her. Doris
perhaps, or Doris' husband; she might do something for fear of what
others might think of her, but she wouldn't do it for me."

"I can't understand it at all," he said, shaking his head.

"I can," she said quietly. "My mother doesn't love him. She has never
loved him. She married him just as Doris and Dolly married, for money,
for position."

"But even then--"

"Yes, even then," she took up with a laugh that had tears in it.
"Wouldn't you think that for the sake of the family name and honor, out
of just simple ordinary gratitude for what had been given her, she would
part with the half, even a th