his integrity. I want
him to be secretary of my company. Will you help me to get him?"
he laughed.

"Do you want me to?" she asked with a quick, serious glance
straight in his eyes, one which he met admirably.

"I have an extremely definite impression," he said lightly, "that
you can make anybody you know do just what you want him to."

"And I have another that you have still another `extremely
definite impression' that takes rank over that," she said, but not
with his lightness, for her tone was faintly rueful. "It is that
you can make _me_ do just what you want me to."

Mr. Valentine Corliss threw himself back on the bench and laughed
aloud. "What a girl!" he cried. Then for a fraction of a second he
set his hand over hers, an evanescent touch at which her whole
body started and visibly thrilled.

She lifted her gloved hand and looked at it with an odd wonder;
her alert emotions, always too ready, flinging their banners to
her cheeks again.

"Oh, I don't think it's soiled," he said, a speech which she
punished with a look of starry contempt. For an instant she made
him afraid that something had gone wrong with his measuring tape;
but with a slow movement she set her hand softly against her hot
cheek; and he was reassured: it was not his touching her that had
offended her, but the allusion to it.

"Thanks," he said, very softly.

She dropped her hand to her parasol, and began, musingly, to dig
little holes in the gravel of the path. "Richard Lindley is
looking for investments," she said.

"I'm glad to hear he's been so successful," returned Corliss.

"He might like a share in your gold-mine."

"Thank heaven it isn't literally a gold-mine," he exclaimed.
"There have been so many crooked ones exploited I don't believe
you could get anybody nowadays to come in on a real one. But I
think you'd make an excellent partner for an adventurer who had
discovered hidden treasure; and I'm that particular kind of
adventurer. I think I'll take you in."

"Do you?"

"How would you like to save a man from being ruined?"

"Ruined? You don't mean it literally?"

"Literally!" He laughed gayly. "If I don't `land' this I'm gone,
smashed, finished--quite ended! Don't bother, I'm going to `land'
it. And it's rather a serious compliment I'm paying you, thinking
you can help me. I'd like to see a woman--just once in the
world--who could manage a thing like this." He became suddenly
very grave. "Good God! wouldn't I be at he