rehand that you will have to
take a different tone with her, whether you are sincere or not;
otherwise you will waste your breath and enrich half a dozen charities
we know of."

"Oh, I'll do it right," said Fleetwell, nonchalantly; "but I'd give my
share of the money twice over if it didn't have to be done at all--that
is, if the money matter could be taken out of it entirely, I mean."

They smoked on in reflective silence for five full minutes before the
President saw fit to resume the conversation. Then he said, slowly and
in his levellest tone:

"You are going to speak to her to-night; very good--you have my best
wishes, as you know. But if anything should happen; if you should agree
to disagree; it is you who must take the initiative. If you don't mean
to marry her, you must tell her so plainly, and before you have given
her a chance to refuse you. Do you understand?"

Fleetwell sprang to his feet as if he had received a blow. He was a
young giant in physique, and he looked uncomfortably belligerent as he
towered above the President's chair.

"By Jove, I do understand you, Cousin Francis, and I'm ashamed to admit
it!" he burst out, wrathfully. "The men on my side of the family have
all been gentlemen, so far as I know, and I'll not be the first to break
the record. I shall do what my grandfather expected me to do--what
Gertrude has a right to expect me to do--and in good faith; you may be
very sure of that!" And having thus spoken his mind, he went out,
leaving Mr. Francis Vennor to his own reflections, which were not
altogether gladsome.

XXIII

THE LAND OF HEART'S DELIGHT

"Here is the place I was looking for," said Brockway, handing Gertrude
to a seat on a great fallen fir which had once been a sentinel on the
farthest outpost of the timber-line. "It's three years since I was here,
but I remember this log and the little stream of snow-water. Isn't it
clear and pure?"

"Everything ought to be that, up here in the face of that great shining
mountain," she said; and then they spread their luncheon on the
tree-trunk between them, and pitied the crowded Tadmorians in the little
hotel below.

"I feel as if I could look down benignantly on the whole world,"
Gertrude declared, searching for the paper of salt and finding it not.
"The things of yesterday seem immeasurably far away; and as for
to-morrow, I could almost persuade myself there isn't going to be any."

"I wish there wasn't going to be any