derable, although latterly she had
seen fit to remove them from the cautious guardianship of the trust
company. She was in mourning, he noticed, and looked much older and more
of a person in every way than when it had been his official duty to
deliver his solemn wigging in the Paris studio to the trust company's
erring ward. Mr. Smith probably realized with satisfaction the success
of his prophecies on the consequences of her rash act, which he had so
eloquently pointed out. Adelle made no reference, however, to her own
troubles, nor explained why she had announced herself by her maiden
name. She had come on more important business.

It took her some time to make clear to the banker what the real purpose
of her visit was, and when Mr. Smith realized it he summoned to the
conference two other officers of the institution, who were better
acquainted with the detail of the Clark estate than he was. After the
thing had been put before them, the temperature in the president's
office leaped upwards with astonishing rapidity on this chilly day in
early May. Three more horrified gentlemen it would have been hard to
find in the entire city, whose citizens are easily horrified. For this
woman, whom Fate and the Washington Trust Company had endowed with a
large fortune, to try to raise the ghost of that troublesome Edward S.
Clark, whom they had been at so much pains and expense to lay, seemed
merely mad. When Adelle reiterated her conviction that she herself had
discovered at last the heirs of the lost Edward S., President Smith
demanded with some asperity whether Mrs. Davis--Mrs. Clark--understood
what this meant. Adelle replied very simply that she supposed it meant
the California Clarks getting at last their half of Clark's Field, which
certainly belonged to them more than to her.

"Not at all!" all three gentlemen roared at her exasperatedly.

"They'd have a hard time making good their title now!" one of them
remarked, with a cynical laugh.

"It would mean a lot of expensive litigation for one thing," another
injected.

"Which would fall upon you," the trust president pointed out.

"But why?" Adelle asked quietly. "I shouldn't fight their claims."

The three gentlemen gasped, and then let forth a flood of discordant
protest, which was summed up by the president's flat assertion,--

"You'd have to!"

Patiently, while his colleagues waited, he tried to make clear to Adelle
in words of two syllables that the Clark's Fie