dly as he gazed at his daughter.
She represented the climax of his rising--she, the lady born and bred,
in her beautiful clothes, with her lovely, delicate charms. Yes, he
had indeed "come up," and there before him was the superb tangible
evidence of it.

Jane had the strongest belief in her father's worldly wisdom. At the
same time, from what David Hull said she had got an impression of a
something different from the ordinary human being in this queer Victor
Dorn. "You'd better move slowly," she said to her father. "There's no
hurry, and you might be mistaken in him."

"Plenty of time," asserted her father. "There's never any need to
hurry about giving up money." Then, with one of those uncanny flashes
of intuition for which he, who was never caught napping, was famous, he
said to her sharply: "You keep your hands off, miss."

She was thrown into confusion--and her embarrassment enraged her
against herself. "What could _I_ do?" she retorted with a brave
attempt at indifference.

"Well--keep your hands off, miss," said the old man. "No female
meddling in business. I'll stand for most anything, but not for that."

Jane was now all eagerness for dropping the subject. She wished no
further prying of that shrewd mind into her secret thoughts. "It's
hardly likely I'd meddle where I know nothing about the circumstances,"
said she. "Will you drive me down to Martha's?"

This request was made solely to change the subject, to shift her father
to his favorite topic for family conversation--his daughter Martha,
Mrs. Hugo Galland, her weakness for fashionable pastimes, her incessant
hints and naggings at her father about his dowdy dress, his vulgar
mannerisms of speech and of conduct, especially at table. Jane had not
the remotest intention of letting her father drive her to Mrs.
Galland's, or anywhere, in the melancholy old phaeton-buggy, behind the
fat old nag whose coat was as shabby as the coat of the master or as
the top and the side curtains of the sorrowful vehicle it drew along at
caterpillar pace.

When her father was ready to depart for his office in the Hastings
Block--the most imposing office building in Remsen City, Jane announced
a change of mind.

"I'll ride, instead," said she. "I need the exercise, and the day
isn't too warm."

"All right," said Martin Hastings grumpily. He soon got enough of
anyone's company, even of his favorite daughter's. Through years of
habit he liked to jog about