n veins."

"Then, my friend," George said, pleasantly, "there's the door."

XVI

George found himself thinking and talking of Allen's views quite enough
to please even Bailly. Blodgett, on the other hand, perhaps because of
the heavy, settled atmosphere of the marble temple, had changed his
tune.

"Things are bound to come right in the end."

As far as George was concerned he might as well have said:

"This marble surrounding me is so many feet thick. Who do you think is
going to interfere with that?"

Something of quite a different nature bothered Lambert, and for a few
days George thought it a not unnatural resentment at seeing Blodgett in
his father's office, but Lambert took pains to awaken him to the truth,
walking in one afternoon a few weeks after the Planters' move to town.
He had an uncertain and discontented appearance.

"By the way, George," he said not without difficulty, "Dolly's about a
good deal."

It was quite certain Lambert hadn't come to announce only that, so
George shrank from his next words, confident that something definite
must have happened. He controlled his anxiety with the thought that
Lambert had, indeed, come to him, and that Dalrymple couldn't permit the
announcement of an engagement without meeting the fulfilment of George's
penalties.

"It's been on my mind for the past week," Lambert went on. "I mean, he
hasn't been seeing her much in public, but he's been hanging around the
house, and last night I spoke to Sylvia about it, told her I didn't
think father would want him any more than I did, pointed out his
financial record, and said I had gathered he owed you no small sum----"

"You blind idiot!" George cried. "Why did you have to say that? How did
you even guess it? I've never opened my mouth."

"He'd milked everybody else dry," Lambert answered, "and Driggs
mentioned a long time ago you'd had a curiously generous notion you'd
like to help Dolly if he ever needed it."

"It wasn't generosity," George said, dryly. "Go ahead. Did you make any
more blunders?"

"You're scarcely one to accuse," Lambert answered. "You put me up to it
in the first place, although I'll admit now, I'd have spoken anyway. I
don't want Sylvia marrying him. I don't want him down town as more than
a salaried man, unless he changes more than he has. I didn't feel even
last night that Sylvia really loved him, but I made her furious, and
you're right. I shouldn't have said that. I daresay she guessed