much for your own sake as mine, didn't
you?" he snarled. "And I don't see what that's got to do with it,
anyway. Those trustees don't know what they missed if they never got the
letter, and you've always kept in with them, you say, and made them
think you were crazy about the girl. They pay you Betty's allowance till
she's of age, don't they? They can't lay a finger on you. You're a fool
to waste my time talking about a little thing like that when we ought to
be planning a way to get hold of that girl before the trustees find out
about it. If we don't get her fixed before she's of age we shall be in
the soup as far as the property is concerned. Isn't that so? Well, then,
we've got to get her good and married----"

"If you only had let her marry Bessemer quietly," whimpered his mother,
"and not have brought in all this deception. It will look so terrible if
it ever comes out. I shall never be able to hold up my head in society
again----!"

"There you are again! Thinking of yourself----!" sneered the dutiful
son, getting up and stamping about her room like a wild man. "I tell
you, Mother, that girl is _mine_, and I won't have Bessemer or anybody
else putting in a finger. _She's mine!_ I told her so a long time ago,
and she knows it! She can't get away from me, and it's going to go the
harder with her because she's tried. I'm never going to forgive her
making a fool out of me before all those people! I'll get her yet!
Little fool!"

Herbert was well on his way into one of those fits of uncontrollable
fury that had always held his mother in obedience to his slightest whim
since the days when he used to lie on the floor and scream himself black
in the face and hold his breath till she gave in; and the poor woman,
wrought to the highest pitch of excitement already by the tragic events
of the evening, which were only the climax of long weeks of agitation,
anxiety and plotting, dropped suddenly into her boudoir chair and began
to weep.

But this new manifestation on the part of his usually pliable mother
only seemed to infuriate the young man. He walked up to her, and seizing
her by the shoulder, shook her roughly:

"Cut that out!" he said hoarsely. "This is no time to cry. We've got to
make some kind of a plan. Don't you see we'll have the hounds of the
press at our heels in a few hours? Don't you see we've got to make a
plan and stick to it?"

His mother looked up, regardless for once of the devastation those few
tear