ously.

Lutie smiled. "It's good to see you mad, Mrs. Tresslyn. It proves that you
are like other people, after all. Give yourself a chance, and you'll find
it just as easy to be glad as it is to be mad, now that you've let go of
yourself a little bit."

"You are insufferable! Be good enough to stand aside. I am going in to my
son. He--"

"If you are so vitally interested in him, how does it happen that you wait
until four o'clock in the afternoon to come around to inquire about him?
I've been here on the job since last night--and so has your daughter. But
you? Where have you been all this time, Mrs. Tresslyn?"

"God in heaven!" gasped Mrs. Tresslyn, otherwise speechless.

"If I had a son I'd be with him day and night at--"

"The telephone was out of order," began Mrs. Tresslyn before she could
produce the power to check the impulse to justify herself in the eyes of
this brazen tormentor.

"Indeed?" said Lutie politely.

"My son shall never marry you," repeated the other, helplessly.

"Well," began Lutie slowly, a bright spot in each cheek, "all I have to
say is that he will be extremely unfair to your grandchildren, Mrs.
Tresslyn, if he doesn't."

CHAPTER XXI

A ground-floor window in an apartment building in Madison Avenue, north of
Fifty-ninth street, displayed in calm black lettering the name "Dr. Braden
L. Thorpe, M.D." On the panel of a door just inside the main entrance
there was a bit of gold-leaf information to the effect that office hours
were from 9 to 10 A.M. and from 2 to 4 P.M. There was a reception room and
a consultation room in the suite. The one was quite as cheerless and
uninviting as any other reception room of its kind, and the other
possessed as many of the strange, terrifying and more or less
misunderstood devices for the prolongation of uncertainty in the minds of
the uneasy. During office-hours there was also a doctor there. Nothing was
missing from this properly placarded and admirably equipped
office,--nothing at all except the patients!

About the time that George Tresslyn fared forth into the world again,
Thorpe hung out his shingle and sat himself down under his own gates to
wait for the unwary. But no one came. The lame, the halt and even the
blind had visions that were not to be dissipated by anything so trivial as
a neat little sign in an office window. The name of Braden Thorpe was on
the lips of every one. It was mentioned, not with horror or disgust, but
as one