e whimpered.

"Isn't it time for your drops? You're too excited, papa dear."

"Then you don't love him," he repeated. "Well, then, it's best for you
both that he go--that's all I've got to say. I thought you cared."

Beatrice's eyebrows lifted. "Really, I can't find any one who can talk
about this thing sensibly," she began.

Suddenly she thought of Gay. There was always Gay; at least she could
never disappoint him, which was what she meant by having him talk
sensibly. Gay knew everyone, how to laugh at the most foolish whims,
pick up fans, exercise lap dogs, and wear a fancy ball costume. What a
blessed thing it was there was Gay.

"It has been quite too strenuous an evening," she said, in conclusion,
"so I'm off for bed. Steve and I will talk more to-morrow. Good-night,
papa. I'm terribly distressed that this has come up to annoy you." She
bent and kissed him prettily.

"I've seen you make more fuss when your lap dog had a goitre
operation," her father surprised her by way of an answer. "It's all
different in my mind now." The thick fingers picked at the bed quilt.
"I thought it would break your heart, but it's just that you want to
break his spirit; so it's better he should go."

Left alone, Constantine lay staring into darkness, his harsh eyes
winking and blinking, and the gnarled thick fingers, which had robbed
so cleverly by way of mahogany-trimmed offices and which had written
so many checks for his Gorgeous Girl, kept on their childish picking
at the quilt. Yet his love for Beatrice, monument to his folly, never
dimmed. He merely was beginning to realize the truth--too late to
change it. And as the pain of loving his dead wife had never ceased
throughout the years, so the new and more poignant pain of loving his
daughter and knowing that she was in the wrong began tugging at his
heartstrings. Well, he was the original culprit; he must see her
through the game with flying colours. As for Steve--he envied him!

In the morning Steve was accosted by Aunt Belle, who felt she must say
her conventional, marcelled, gray-satin, and violet-perfumed
reproaches. All Beatrice had told her was that Steve was now an
impossible pauper, that he loved Mary Faithful and had loved her for
years, that it was quite awful, and she was going to divorce him. Her
aunt, with the proper emotions of a Gorgeous Girl's aunt, and
uncomfortable memories of love in a cottage with the late Mr. Todd,
began to upbraid Steve. She began in a