he edge of the Chippendale table, she was crying like a
child.

Crying bitterly; and yet in a kind of new, strange joy. Crying with
tears so bitter-sweet that she, herself, could not half understand them;
could not fathom the deeper meaning that lay hidden there.

"If!" she whispered to her heart. "If only I were of his class, or he of
mine!"

And Gabriel, what of him?

As he swung north and westward, day by day, on the long hike toward
Niagara, the memory of the girl went with him, and hour by hour bore him
company.

He was not forgetting. Could he forget? Strive as he might, to thrust
her out of his heart and soul, she still indwelt there.

Not all his philosophy, nor all his realization that this woman he had
saved, this woman who had lain in his two arms and mingled her breath
with his, belonged to another and an alien class, could banish her.

And as he strode along, swinging his knotted stick at the daisies and
pondering on all that might have been and now could never be, a sudden,
passionate longing burst over him, as a long sea-roller, hurled against
a cliff, flings upward in vast tourbillions of spume.

Raising his face to the summer sky, his bare head high with emotion and
his eyes wide with the thought of strange possibilities that shook and
intoxicated him, he cried:

"Oh--would God she were an orphan and an outcast! Would God she had no
penny in this world to call her own!"

CHAPTER XVIII.

FLINT AND WALDRON PLAN.

"Tiger" Waldron's interview with old man Flint, regarding Catherine's
breaking of the engagement, was particularly electric. Promptly at the
appointed hour, Waldron appeared, shook hands with the older man, sat
down and lighted a cigar, then proceeded to business.

"Flint," said he, without any ado, "I've come here to tell you some very
unpleasant news and to ask your help. Can you stand the one, and give me
the other?"

The Billionaire looked at him through his pince-nez, poised on that
vulture-beak, with some astonishment. Then he smiled nervously, showing
his gleaming tooth of gold, and answered:

"Yes, I guess so. What's wrong?"

"What's wrong? Everything! Catherine has broken our engagement!"

For a moment old Flint sat there motionless and staring. Then, moving
his head forward with a peculiar, pecking twitch that still further
enhanced his likeness to a buzzard, he stammered:

"You--you mean--?"

"I mean just what I say. Your daughter has severed the betrot