hat with her; to see the
blue-gray eyes lifted to his; to find in them something he found in no
others. At such times a telegram sped over the wires, to Aurora Googe,
and her heart was rejoiced by a two days' visit from her son.

Champney Googe knew perfectly well that this cross current of influence
was diametrically opposed to his own course of life as he had marked it
out for himself; knew that this was a species of self-gratification in
which he had no business to indulge; he knew, moreover, that from the
moment he should make an earnest effort to win Alice Van Ostend and her
accompanying millions, this self-gratification must cease. He told
himself this over and over again; meanwhile he made excuse--a talk with
the manager of the quarries, a new order of weekly payments to introduce
and regulate with Romanzo Caukins, the satisfactory pay-master in the
Flamsted office, a week-end with his mother, the consideration of
contracts and the erection of a new shed on the lake shore--to visit
Flamsted several times during the autumn, winter, and early spring.

At last, however, he called a halt.

Alice Van Ostend, young, immature, amusing in her girlish abandon to the
delight of at last "coming out", was, nevertheless, rapidly growing up,
a condition of affairs that Champney was forced rather unwillingly to
admit just before her first large ball. As usual he made himself useful
to Alice, who looked upon him as a part of her goods and chattels. It
was in the selection of the favors for the german to be given in the
stone house on the occasion of the coming-out reception for its heiress,
that his eyes were suddenly opened to the value of time, so to say; for
Alice was beginning to patronize him. By this sign he recognized that
she was putting the ten years' difference in their ages at something
like a generation. It was not pleasing to contemplate, because the
winning of Alice Van Ostend was, to use his own expression, in a line
coincident with his own life lines. Till now he believed he was the
favored one; but certain signs of the times began to be provocative of
distrust in this direction.

He asked boldly for the first dance, for the cotillon, and the privilege
of giving her the flowers she was to wear that night. He assumed these
favors to be within his rights; she was by no means of his way of
thinking. It developed during their scrapping--Champney had often to
scrap with Alice to keep on a level with her immaturity-