est in."

He looked so insolent as he sat back with half-closed eyes and stroked
his silken, black moustache that his father lost his temper.

"I know nothing about your affairs of one kind," he burst out angrily,
"and I do not wish to know; but I want to tell you that I think you are
making an ass of yourself to be hanging around that Wentworth woman,
having every one talking about you and laughing at you."

The young man's dark face flushed angrily.

"What's that?" he said sharply.

"She is another man's wife. Why don't you let her alone?" pursued the
father.

"For that very reason," said Ferdy, recovering his composure and his
insolent air.

"---- it! Let the woman alone," said his father. "Your fooling around
her has already cost us the backing of Wentworth & Son--and,
incidentally, two or three hundred thousand."

The younger man looked at the other with a flash of rage. This quickly
gave way to a colder gleam.

"Really, sir, I could not lower myself to measure a matter of sentiment
by so vulgar a standard as your ---- money."

His air was so intolerable that the father's patience quite gave way.

"Well, by ----! you'd better lower yourself, or you'll have to stoop
lower than that. Creamer, Crustback & Company are out with us; the
Wentworths have pulled out; so have Kestrel and others. Your deals and
corners have cost me a fortune. I tell you that unless we pull through
that deal down yonder, and unless we get that railroad to earning
something, so as to get a basis for rebonding, you'll find yourself
wishing you had my 'damned money.'"

"Oh, I guess we'll pull it through," said the young man. He rose coolly
and walked out of the office.

The afternoon he spent with Mrs. Norman. He had to go South, he told
her, to look after some large interests they had there. He made the
prospects so dazzling that she laughingly suggested that he had better
put a little of her money in there for her. She had quite a snug sum
that the Wentworths had given her.

"Why do not you ask Norman to invest it?" he inquired, with a laugh.

"Oh, I don't know. He says bonds are the proper investment for women."

"He rather underestimates your sex, some of them," said Wickersham. And
as he watched the color come in her cheeks, he added: "I tell you what I
will do: I will put in fifty thousand for you on condition that you
never mention it to a soul."

"I promise," she said half gratefully, and they shook hands on it.

Th