with cutthroats----"

"Are you going to hurry and dress so we can go?" She smiled her
prettiest.

At one time Steve would have noted only that white tulle and pearls
spun witchery, and her skirt possessed the charm of a Hawaiian girl's
dancing costume. Even at this juncture he recalled and smiled at past
blindness.

"You don't seem to understand what I am saying, and all that is
happening. First I played Arizona copper until they taught me not to
monkey with the band wagon; then I played Cobalt until the same thing
took place." He sank impolitely into an easy-chair. "Then I got the
chance to come in with the gang--an insulting proposition any way you
want to figure--a paltry sum for everything I have and the statement
in veiled terms that I need not expect to have that unless I did as
they dictate."

"Well--sell your business to someone else before this happens!"

"I couldn't even if I wished to cheat; it is quite the talk of the
town."

"Well--manage. Papa will tell you how. Why do you come running to me?
Goodness, don't stare like that. It's nothing unusual to manage! I
don't know about business--you made a lot of money once and I should
think you could do it again."

"It doesn't bother me as much as you think," he said, almost
breathlessly, eager to know the worst. "It means I am a poor man in
your estimation. I can sell out to these people, who have thrown a
steel ring round their game, so to speak, and had to do it until your
father was out of the running. I can never buck them--I'm not fool
enough to be goaded on to try. Your father could not win out the way
things are now--but he could have prevented their ever getting the
upper hand--because he knows every last turn of the wheel. They could
not have fooled him. I didn't know what was coming until it was too
late. A get-rich-quick man always pays for his own speed!"

"Stevuns, you'll make me so nervous I can't go to-night. It's a lovely
party. You stay home and tell papa all about it, but leave me in
peace."

"Thank you, I will. And is this the sympathy and the understanding you
give me when I say we are being ruined?"

"Don't keep saying it." She stamped her little foot. "Papa has lots of
money in English and Chinese securities and I don't know what-all.
Why, that factory of his was the least of his fortune."

"That is why your father deliberately lifted three fourths of his
money from the business just before he was taken ill. He was not going
t