when he had won the father's consent. He
had authentic inside information that the son had stakes other than
financial. He counted on youth's imperious urge to happiness. The lad had
done without Carlotta for two months now. It had seemed probable he would
be more amenable to reason in August than he had been in June. But it did
not look like it just now.

"You are a darn fool, my young man," he gnarled.

"Very likely," said Phil Lambert, with the same quietness which had
marked his father's speech earlier in the day. "If you had a son, Mr.
Cressy, wouldn't you want him to be the same kind of a darn fool? Would
you expect him to take French leave the first time somebody offered him
more money?"

Harrison Cressy snorted, beckoned to the waiter his face purple with
rage. Why in blankety blank blank et cetera, et cetera, didn't he bring
the fish? Did he think they were there for the season? Philip did not
know he had probed an old wound. The one great disappointment of Harrison
Cressy's career was the fact that he had no son, or had had one for such
a brief space of hours that he scarcely counted except as a pathetic
might-have-been And even as Phil had said, so he would have wanted his
son to behave. The boy was a man, every inch of him, just such a man as
Harrison Gressy had coveted for his own.

"Hang the money part." he snapped back at Phil, after the interlude with
the harrassed waiter. "Let's drop it."

"With all my heart," agreed Phil. "Considering the money part hanged what
is left to the offer? Carlotta?"

Mr. Cressy dropped his fork with a resounding clatter to the floor and
swore muttered monotonous oaths at the waiter for not being
instantaneously on the spot to replace the implement.

"Young man," he said to Phil. "You are too devilish smart. Carlotta--is
why I am here."

"So I imagined. Did she send you?"

"Great Scott, no! My life wouldn't be worth a brass nickel if she knew I
was here."

"I am glad she didn't. I wouldn't like Carlotta to think I could
be--bribed."

"She didn't. Carlotta has perfectly clear impressions as to where you
stand. She gives you entire credit for being the blind, stubborn,
pigheaded jack-ass that you are."

Phil grinned faintly at this accumulation of epithets, but his blue eyes
had no mirth in them. The interview was beginning to be something of a
strain. He wished it were over.

"That's good," he said. "Apparently we all know where we all stand. I
have no illusi