"This is Stephen Langdon, and I wanted to speak—"

He was interrupted by the person at the other end of the wire, who uttered an exclamation of surprise, followed by these words:

"Why, Mr. Langdon, Mr. Melvin has gone to your house to see you, as we supposed. A telephone call came from your residence, and he departed at once, saying that he would not return to the office to-day."

"The devil he did!" exclaimed the banker, as he hung up the receiver. Then, he leaned back in his chair and smoked hard for a moment, with the nearest approach to a frown that had appeared on his face during all that exciting afternoon; and he did another thing unusual with him: he spoke aloud his thoughts, with no one but himself for listener.

"I'll be blowed if I thought Patricia would go as far as that!" was what he said. "If she hasn't sent for Malcolm Melvin to draw those papers she hinted at, I'm a Dutchman! By Jove, I begin to think that Duncan was right after all, and that he is up against it in this little play we have had this afternoon. But I hadn't an idea that my girl would go quite so far. H'm! It looks as if it is up to me to spoil her interview with Melvin, if I can get there in time."

Five minutes later, he left the banking-house, paused at a letter-box long enough to drop in the correspondence he had signed, and then went swiftly onward to the subway, by which he was conveyed rapidly to the vicinity of his home. Somewhat later, when he entered the sumptuously appointed library, he discovered precisely what he had expected to find: his lawyer, Malcolm Melvin, and his daughter Patricia were facing each other across the table, the former having before him several sheets of paper, which were already covered with the penciled notes and memoranda he had evidently been engaged in making.

Langdon stopped in the middle of the floor and looked at them. For the first time since the beginning of the interview with his daughter at the office, he realized that she had been in deadly earnest at its close. He understood, suddenly, how deeply her pride had been wounded, and he knew that she was enough like himself to resent it with all the power she could command.

"Since when, Melvin, have you ceased to be my attorney!" he inquired sharply, determined to put an end to the scene, at once.

The elderly lawyer and the young woman had raised their heads from earnest conversation when Stephen Langdon entered the room. The lawyer, with a 

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