I arranged to meet him here on the
sixteenth, day after to-morrow."

"Here!"

Adelle nodded.

"We thought that would be the quickest way to settle it, as you know all
about the property."

"The young man will have his journey for nothing," the president said
grimly.

Then he took Adelle to task in the same patronizing, moral tone he had
used to her on the occasion of her marriage.

"My dear young woman, you have acted in this matter very inadvisedly,
very rashly!"

That was her unfortunate habit, he seemed to say, to act rashly. The
irony of it all was that Adelle, who acted so rarely of her own
initiative, should be exposed to this charge in the two most important
instances when she had acted of her own volition and acted promptly!

"You see now how disastrous any such course as you proposed would be for
you and for many others." (He was thinking chiefly of his board of
directors and the gentlemen who had profited through the Clark's Field
Associates, but he put it in the altruistic way.) "Fortunately, you can
do no great harm to these innocent persons. The titles to Clark's Field
we firmly believe are unassailable, impregnable. No court in this State
would void those titles after they have once been quieted. You have
merely aroused false hopes, I am afraid, and the spirit of greed in a
lot of ignorant poor people,--who unless they are well advised will
waste their savings in a vain attempt to get property that doesn't
belong to them."

His tone was both moral and reproving. He wanted her to feel that,
whereas she had thought she was doing a generous and high-minded thing
by communicating to this lost tribe of Clarks her knowledge of their
outlawed opportunity for riches, she had in reality merely made trouble
for every one including herself.

"You are a woman," Mr. Solomon Smith continued severely, "and naturally
ignorant of business and law. It is a pity that you did not consult some
one, some strong, sensible person whose judgment you could rely on, and
not fly off at a tangent on a foolish ideal!... By the way, where is
your husband?"

"In California," Adelle replied sulkily.

She did not like Mr. Smith's tone. He knew very well that Archie was not
the strong, sensible person upon whose judgment she might rely.

"Are you divorced?" the president asked, remembering that she had
announced herself by her maiden name.

"No," Adelle admitted, wondering what this had to do with the business.

"Well,