tage of his losses to pay off my own--but"--her feelings
seemed to overcome her and wildly, desperately, she added--"but I
can't--I can't. I--I must rescue him--I must."

It was a strange situation. Constance reasoned it out quickly. What a
wreck of life these two were making! Not only they were involved, but
others who as yet knew nothing, Mrs. Noble's husband, the family of
Halsey. She must help.

"Mrs. Noble," said Constance calmly, "can you trust me?"

She shot a quick glance at Constance. "Yes," she murmured.

"Then to-night visit Mrs. LeMar as though nothing had happened.
Meanwhile I will have thought out a plan."

It was late in the afternoon when Constance saw Halsey again, this time
in his office, where he had been waiting impatiently for some word from
her. The relief at seeing her showed only too plainly on his face.

"This inaction is killing me," he remarked huskily. "Has anything
happened to-day!"

She said nothing about the visit of Mrs. Noble. Perhaps it was better
that each should not know yet that the other was worried.

"Yes," she replied, "much has happened. I cannot tell you now. But
to-night let us all go again as though nothing had occurred."

"They have twenty-five thousand dollars in stock certificates already
which I have given them," he remarked anxiously.

"Some way--any way, you must get them back for a time. Let me see some
of the blanks."

Halsey shut the door. From a secret drawer of his desk he drew a
package of beautifully engraved paper.

Constance looked at it a moment. Then with a fountain pen, across the
front of each, she made a few marks. Halsey looked on eagerly. As she
handed them back to him, not a sign showed on any part of them.

"You must tell them that there is something wrong with the others, that
you will give them other certificates of your own about which there is
no question. Tell them anything to get them back. Here--take this other
fountain pen, sign the new certificates with that, in their presence so
that they will suspect nothing. To-night I shall expect you to play up
to the limit, to play into Mrs. Noble's hand and assume her losses,
too. I shall meet you there at nine."'

Constance had laid her plans quickly. That night she waited in her own
apartment until she heard Halsey enter across the hall. She had
determined to give him plenty of time to obtain the old forged
certificates and substitute for them the new forgeries.

Perhaps half an hour