asked. She shook her head. "To tell you the truth," she told him, "I rather shrank from it. I could not seem to bring it into perspective—you know what I mean. How am I to go to him? I don't suppose he has changed. He is still splendidly faithful to the ideas of his earlier days. I do not suppose he has moved a step out of his groove. He is looking at the same things in the same way. Am I to go to him as a Magdalen, as a penitent? Honestly, Reginald, I couldn't play the part."

Their eyes met, and they both smiled. "It is very difficult," he admitted, "to discuss or to hold in common a matter of importance with a person of another world. Why do you go?"

"Because," she replied, "he is, after all, my father; because I know that the pain and rage which he felt when he left England are there today, and I would like so much to make him see that they have all been wasted. I want him to realize that my life has been made, not spoilt."

"I should find out indirectly, if I were you, how he is feeling," the Marquis advised. "I rather agree with you that you will find him unchanged. His fierce opposition to my reasonable legal movements against him give one that impression."

"I shall probably be sorry I went," she admitted, "but it seems to me that it is one of those things which must be done. Let us talk of something else. Tell me how you have spent the week?"

"For one thing, I have improved my acquaintance with the American, David Thain, of whom I have already spoken to you," he told her.

"And your great financial scheme?"

"It promises well. Of course, if it is entirely successful, it will be like starting life all over again."

"There is a certain amount of risk, I suppose?" she asked, a little anxiously.

The Marquis waved his hand. "In this affair quite negligible," he declared.

"It would make you very happy, of course, to free the estates," she ruminated.

The Marquis for a moment revealed a side of himself which always made Marcia feel almost maternal towards him. "It would give me very great pleasure, also," he confessed, "to point out to my solicitors—to Mr. Wadham, Junior, especially—that the task which they have left unaccomplished for some twenty-five years I have myself undertaken successfully."

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