their far-away gleam, and were fixed upon hers, cold and
expressionless.

"Yes, uncle!" she said.

"I want to talk to you for a few moments," he said. "Listen, and don't
interrupt."

She leaned a little toward him in an attitude of attention. The words
seemed to frame themselves slowly upon his lips.

"You have been wondering, I suppose, like all the rest of the world," he
began, "why I sent for you here. I am going to tell you. But first of
all let me know this. Are you satisfied with what I have done for you,
and for your people? In other words, have you any feeling of what
people, I believe, call gratitude towards me?"

"I wonder that you can ask me that," she answered, a little tremulously.
"You know that I am very, very grateful indeed."

"You like your life?" he asked. "You find it"--he hesitated for a
moment--"more amusing than at Wellham Springs?"

"I am only an ordinary girl," she answered simply, "and you must realize
what the difference means. Life there was a sort of struggle which led
nowhere. Here I don't see how any one could be happier than I. Apart
from that, what you have done for the others counts, I think, for more
than anything with me."

"I am glad," he answered, "that you are satisfied. You think, perhaps,
from what you have seen since you came here that the power of money has
no limits. I can tell you that it has very fixed and definite limits,
and it was when I realized them that I sent for you. I hope to gain from
you what in all New York I should not know where to buy."

She was careful not to interrupt him, but her eyes were full of mute
questions.

"I mean," he continued, "fidelity, absolute unswerving fidelity. The
four men who have been here to-night call themselves my friends. We are
leagued together in enterprises of immense importance. Yet take them one
by one, and there is not one whom I can trust. I have proved it. I pay
my two secretaries more highly than any other employer in the city. They
do their duty, but I know very well that they only wait for some one
else to outbid me, and they would take themselves and their knowledge of
my affairs to whoever might call them. It has become necessary that
there should be one person in whose charge I can repose the knowledge of
certain things. New York does not hold such a person. That is why I have
sent for you."

He paused so long that she ignored his injunction of silence.

"You know very well, uncle," she said, "that I am