pe will excuse us for talking shop we might
glance over them together."

"You're selfish," pouted Mrs. Sharpe quite prettily, but,
nevertheless, she turned her exclusive attention to Garland for the
time being.

With considerable interest Bobby plunged into the business at hand.
Here was a well-established concern that had been doing business for
three decades, which had been paying ten per cent. dividends for
years, and which would doubtless continue to do so for many years to
come. An opportunity to obtain control of it solved his problem of
investment at once, and he strove to approach its intricacies with
intelligence. He became vaguely aware, by and by, that just behind him
Garland and Mrs. Sharpe were carrying on a most animated conversation
in an undertone interspersed with much laughter, and once, with a
start of annoyance, he overheard Garland telling a slightly _risque_
story, at which Mrs. Sharpe laughed softly and with evident relish. He
glanced around involuntarily. Garland had his arm across the back of
her chair, and they were leaning toward each other in a close
proximity which Bobby reflected with sudden savageness could not
possibly occur if that were his wife; nor was he much softened by the
later reflection that, in the first place, a woman of her type never
could have been his wife, and that, in the second place, it was not
the man who was to blame, nor the woman so much, as Sharpe himself.
Indeed, Bobby somehow gained the impression that the others flouted
and despised Sharpe and held him as a weakling.

His glance was but a fleeting one, and he turned from them with a look
which Sharpe, noting, misinterpreted.

"I had hoped," he said, "to go into this thing very thoroughly, so
that we could begin the reorganization at once, with the preliminaries
completely understood; but if we are detaining you from any
engagement, Mr. Burnit--"

"Not at all, not at all," the highly-interested Bobby hastened to
assure him. "I have no engagements whatever to-night, and my time is
entirely at your disposal."

"Then let's drop down to the theater," suddenly interposed Mrs.
Sharpe. "You can talk your dust-dry business there just as well as
here. Billy, telephone down to the Orpheum and see if they have a
box."

Bobby was far too unsuspecting to understand that he had been
deliberately trapped. Though not of the ultra-exclusives, his social
position was an excellent one and he had the entree everywhere. To