h business cares, but Randall Clayton had roamed
the streets of New York at night, restlessly, since Witherspoon's
sailing. In a feverish unrest, he had visited concert halls,
theaters, and searched the now deserted club-rooms for a familiar
face.

A Sunday drive in the Park, and late excursions among the
kaleidoscopic crowds of midnight New York filled up his time until
he should again meet Irma Gluyas.

He had always turned away in disgust from the painted faces of the
leering sirens of the Tenderloin, and now he sat gloomily eying the
vacuous stare of the rabbit-faced stage beauties capering in their
mock diamonds. For a higher womanly ideal reigned in his lonely
bosom.

Back, back to the speaking silence of his lonely rooms he wandered,
to gaze through the smoke wreaths upon that picture which had so
strangely brought Irma Gluyas into his life. Gloomily recalling
the past, he went over all the brief memories of his boyhood, and
tried to recall his stern father's few confidences, or picture to
himself the mother whom he had never known. All was a gray blank
of toiling days and carking cares. And Worthington had robbed him
and made him eat the bread of dependence.

He lived now only to wreak a vengeance upon the man who had shared
his father's early speculations and deserted him in his time of need.
The ruin of Everett Clayton was now explained. And but one gracious
memory lingered with him to lighten the gloom of his dependent
boyhood.

Golden-haired Alice Worthington, the child-angel of the house,
the frank girlish little playmate, the slim, shy school girl, the
"Little Sister" of his striving college days. And now she was
doomed to be the deluded prey of a vulgar money conspiracy--sold,
body and soul.

He groaned as he thought of the deliberate sacrifice of the girl's
glorious young womanhood to the vicious ambitions of her father's
mad race for wealth and power.

"Shall I warn her?" he bitterly mused. And then all his manhood
rose up against discovering a father's shame. "Never!" he cried. "I
have eaten his bread and salt. My quarrel is with him alone! Ferris
is to be the coming bridegroom. He is like all the rest--greedy of
money and power. He will surely make her a "good husband" of the
plutocratic code. Her money, his uncle's influence, bartered off
for each other, will tie them firmly together. She shall never know
from me. But I will fight Hugh Worthington a silent battle to the
death. It will