e
conclusions, and his courage returned. He breakfasted at his usual early
hour, and Edith Stevens, for some reason best known to herself, came
down-stairs at about the same time. After breakfast, as had become
almost a habit, they sat together on the piazza, he with his cigar, she
with an infinite nothing upon which from time to time she plied a not
overworked needle.

"Well," he said at length, knocking off the ash from his cigar and
regarding it contemplatively for some moments before he
continued,--"Monty gave it to me good and straight yesterday, didn't
he?"

"You asked him to--"

"I know I did. You remember the man who said he didn't get what he
expected, and some one told him he was lucky not to get what he
deserved? Well, I got both."

"Mr. Huntington had to say what he thought; you forced him to."

"But I didn't really believe he did think it. I've been bowling along
all these years, and I suppose I've become too complacent. When I called
myself names yesterday I hadn't the slightest idea that any one would
agree with me. It was a case where I wanted to be contradicted."

"Oh!" was all that Edith said, but the exclamation conveyed more to
Cosden regarding her real attitude than a whole vocabulary.

"Then you agree with Monty?" he demanded.

Edith had expected this crisis to come, so it did not find her wholly
unprepared. In fact she had been awaiting it as the point from which his
education was to be continued, as she had explained to Huntington. She
pursed her lips a little as she replied.

"Yes--and no," she answered slowly, showing a serious consideration of
the subject which impressed Cosden. "I think he was right in saying that
business has left its mark upon you, but entirely wrong in his
assumption that what you lack can't be acquired."

"Of course it can," Cosden agreed emphatically; "and what is more, it's
going to be acquired. I don't intend to have anything stand in my way.
The only thing to consider is just how and when."

"Exactly," she encouraged him,--"just how and when. These are the
questions. Have you answered them?"

"Not yet. I'm trying first to understand what Monty meant. I thought I
had learned the game. While, as I've told you, I started out with the
definite intention of making money, I've bent over backwards to conduct
my affairs so that they should be absolutely above criticism. I believed
that in doing this I proved that I had those 'finer instincts' which
mean so muc