ty of Albany with a few hours on his hands before he could make
connections for the West, he bethought himself of the trust company's
young charge and ran out to look over the school and incidentally
Adelle. No one from the Washington Trust Company had ever paid its ward
a visit,--Adelle was the only unvisited girl in the school,--but Mr.
Ashly Crane was the kind of vigorous young banker, not yet quite forty,
who could be depended upon to "keep in personal touch" with all his
clients. That is why, probably, he had superseded Mr. Gardiner, who had
a staid habit of relying upon printed forms and the mail.

Mr. Ashly Crane was a good-looking, keen American banker, who paid
strict attention to his manners, clothes, and habits. He was ambitious,
of course, and had been so busily climbing upwards from his first
clerkship in the trust company that he had not yet married. Very likely
he felt that with his ever-widening horizon of prospects it would not be
wise to anchor himself socially to any woman, who might prove to be a
drag upon his future. He was still well within the marriageable limits
and looked even younger. Nothing so well preserves youth as Success, and
of this tonic Mr. Ashly Crane had had an abundance. Mr. Crane, it should
not be thought, had armed himself with a bunch of enormous red roses
from the leading florist of Albany and set forth upon his expedition
with any formulated plot against the little heiress who was the
company's ward. He recalled her in fact as a most unattractive, gawky
little girl, who must have changed inconceivably for the better if she
were to interest Mr. Ashly Crane personally. But the Clark estate, under
the skillful method of treatment for which he was largely responsible,
was growing all the time, and thanks to the probate judge's precaution,
Adelle would ultimately reap rather more than one half of the earnings
of the Clark's Field Associates. Already her expenses, represented by
the liberal checks to Herndon Hall, were a mere nothing in the total of
the income that went on rolling up in conservative bonds and stocks that
were safely stowed away in the vaults under the Washington Trust
Company. It seemed only proper that the sole representative of so much
tangible property should be accorded every consideration by those
legally constituted her servants and guardians. Single motives are more
rarely found in life than in art, and Mr. Ashly Crane's motives this
fine April morning were qui