and as Bob Rushbrook's generosity to
pretty women is already a matter of suspicion, perhaps you are wise to
destroy that record of it."

"Coward!" said Grace, "stand aside and let me pass!" She swept by him
to the door. But it opened upon Rushbrook's re-entrance. He stood for
an instant glancing at the pair, and then on the fragments of the paper
that strewed the floor. Then, still holding the door in his hand, he
said quietly:--

"One moment before you go, Miss Nevil. If this is the result of any
misunderstanding as to the presence of another woman here, in company
with Mr. Somers, it is only fair to him to say that that woman is here
as a friend of MINE, not of his, and I alone am responsible."

Grace halted, and turned the cold steel of her proud eyes on the two
men. As they rested on Rushbrook they quivered slightly. "I can already
bear witness," she said coldly, "to the generosity of Mr. Rushbrook in
a matter which then touched me. But there certainly is no necessity
for him to show it now in a matter in which I have not the slightest
concern."

As she swept out of the room and was received in the respectable shadow
of the waiting James, Rushbrook turned to Somers.

"And I'M afraid it won't do--for Leyton saw you," he said curtly. "Now,
then, shut that door, for you and I, Jack Somers, have a word to say to
each other."

What that word was, and how it was said and received, is not a part of
this record. But it is told that it was the beginning of that mighty
Iliad, still remembered of men, which shook the financial camps of San
Francisco, and divided them into bitter contending parties. For when it
became known the next day that Somers had suddenly abandoned Rushbrook,
and carried over to a powerful foreign capitalist the secret methods,
and even, it was believed, the LUCK of his late employer, it was certain
that there would be war to the knife, and that it was no longer a
struggle of rival enterprise, but of vindictive men.

CHAPTER VII

For a year the battle between the Somers faction and the giant but
solitary Rushbrook raged fiercely, with varying success. I grieve to say
that the proteges and parasites of Maecenas deserted him in a body; nay,
they openly alleged that it was the true artistic nature and refinement
of Somers that had always attracted them, and that a man like Rushbrook,
who bought pictures by the yard,--equally of the unknown struggling
artist and the famous masters,--was no true