and set here and there with
shrubs and flower-beds and a fountain whose misty spray hung a golden
aureole upon the sunlight. It was quite worthy of Westville's most
distinguished citizen--a big, roomy house of brick, its sterner lines
all softened with cool ivy, and with a wide piazza crossing its entire
front and embracing its two sides.

The hour was that at which Westville arose from its accustomed mid-day
dinner--which was the reason Katherine was calling at Blake's home
instead of going downtown to his office. She was informed that he was
in. Telling the maid she would await him in his library, where she
knew he received all clients who called on business at his home, she
ascended the well-remembered stairway and entered a large, light room
with walls booked to the ceiling.

Despite her declaration to her father that that old love episode
had been long forgotten by Mr. Blake, at this moment it was not
forgotten by her. She could not subdue a fluttering agitation over
the circumstance that she was about to appeal for succour to a man
she had once refused.

She had but a moment to wait. Blake's tall, straight figure entered
and strode rapidly across the room, his right hand outstretched.

"What--you, Katherine! I'm so glad to see you!"

She had risen. "And I to see you, Mr. Blake." For all he had once
vowed himself her lover, she had never overcome her girlhood awe of
him sufficiently to use the more familiar "Harrison."

"I knew you were coming home, but I had not expected to see you so
soon. Please sit down again."

She resumed her soft leather-covered chair, and he took the
swivel chair at his great flat-topped library desk. His manner was
most cordial, but lurking beneath it Katherine sensed a certain
constraint--due perhaps, to their old relationship--perhaps due to
meeting a friend involved in a family disgrace.

Blake was close upon forty, with a dark, strong, handsome face,
penetrating but pleasant eyes, and black hair slightly marked with
gray. He was well dressed but not too well dressed, as became a public
man whose following was largely of the country. His person gave an
immediate impression of a polished but not over-polished gentleman--of
a man who in acquiring a large grace of manner, has lost nothing of
virility and bigness and purpose.

"It seems quite natural," Katherine began, smiling, and trying to
speak lightly, "that each time I come home it is to congratulate you
upon some new honou