o do Miss Comstock's will.

This blunder of Adelle's official guardian also gave Miss Comstock a
great prestige with the girl herself. Pussy had so cleverly unmasked the
designing man that Adelle felt only mortification for the incident and
was grateful for Miss Comstock's friendship and impressed by her
knowledge of the world. Miss Comstock made much of her in the ensuing
weeks, and for this angular and somewhat worn middle-aged woman Adelle
began to have the first real passion of her life. She was putty in her
hands for a time and obeyed her slightest suggestion. Instead of curbing
Adelle's tendency to extravagance, the mistress of the Villa Ponitowski
encouraged it, partly for her own gratification and partly to serve
warning upon the trust officer. Mr. Crane might well wonder where Adelle
put the money she drew; he would have been amazed if he could have known
the ingenious ways which Miss Comstock found for improving her
opportunity. In all the years that she had pursued her parasitic
occupation, she had never had such a free chance, and she began to dream
ambitiously of appropriating Adelle and Clark's Field for life.

With Pussy's approval Adelle bought another motor, a high-powered
touring-car, and she kept besides several saddle-horses for use in the
Bois. She generously assumed the entire rent of Miss Baxter's expensive
studio when that imprudent artist found herself in difficulties; but
that comes a little later. Adelle defrayed all the expenses of the Nile
trip which Miss Comstock made with her family this winter. These are a
few instances of the spending habit, but the great leak was the constant
wastefulness to which Adelle was becoming accustomed. She spent a lot of
money merely for the sake of spending it, buying nothings of all sorts
to give away or throw away. It seemed as if all the penurious years of
the Clarks were now being revenged in one long prodigal draft by this
last representative of their line. The magic lamp responded admirably
each time Adelle rubbed it by simply writing her name upon a slip of
paper at the banker's. She had a child's curiosity to find out the
limits of its marvelous power, and daringly increased her demands upon
it. Possibly if Miss Comstock's designs had carried, she might have
discovered this limit within a few years: but her fate was shaping
otherwise.

Meantime her little "affair" with the banker excited the other girls in
the family, who felt that the rich young he