Chapter XIV: The Treason of Isegrim the Wolf

Then up and spake Reynard, the Fox, King Leo's throne before:
"My clients, haled before you, Sire, deserve not frown nor roar!
These flocks and herds and sties, dread lord, should thanks
give for our care--
The care of Isegrim the Wolf, and Bruin strong, the Bear!
Its usefulness, its innocence, our Syndicate protests.
We crave the Court's support for our legitimate interests!"
--_An Appeal to King Leo_.

The sifting of St. Peter
Seems quite credible to me,
When I see what's done to absentees
At our Society!
--_Annals of Sorosis_.

Any business man will be able to appreciate the difficulties which beset the president of the Brassfield Oil Company, on the discharge of Mr. Stevens. On the morning after the lodge meeting, behold Mr. Amidon at his desk, contemplating a rising pile of unanswered letters. His countenance expresses defeat, despair and aversion. His politeness toward Miss Strong is never-failing; but that he is not himself grows more and more apparent to that clear-headed young woman.

"Here's the third letter from the Bayonne refinery," she said. "An immediate reply is demanded."

"Oh, yes," said Amidon; "certainly; that has gone too long! We must get at that matter at once: let me see the contracts and correspondence."

"That is the business," said Miss Strong, "which they claim to have arranged with you in a conversation over the long-distance 'phone. That's what seems to be the matter with them--they want to make a record of it."

"I don't remember---- Well," said Amidon, "lay that by for a moment. And this piece of business with the A. B. & C. Railway. Who knows anything about this claim for demurrage?"

"Mr. Stevens," said Miss Strong, "had that in hand, and said he told you all about it before you went away, and that you were going to see about it in----"

"In New York, I suppose!" exclaimed Amidon. "Well, I didn't. Can't you and Mr. Alderson take up this pile of letters and bring 'em to me with the correspondence, and--and papers--and things? I've been too lax in the past, in not referring to the records. I must have the records, Miss Strong, in every case."

"Yes, sir," said Miss Strong; "but since we adopted that new system of filing, I don't see how the records can be made any fuller, or how you can be more fully acquainted with them than you now are----"

"Not at all," asseverated Mr. Amidon. "I find myself uncertain as to a great many things. Let's have the records constantly."

"Yes, sir, but these are cases where there isn't anything. Nobody but you and Mr. Stevens knows anything about them."

"Well, I can't answer them now," protested Mr. Amidon. "I've a headache! My--my mind isn't clear--is confused on some of these things; and they'll all have to wait a while. Who's that tapping? Oh, it's you, is it, Mr. Alderson--you startled me so that I---- Mr. Edgington here? Well, why don't you show him in? After luncheon, Miss Strong, you may come in again."

Mr. Edgington had a tightly-curled mustache, a pink flush on his cheeks, wore an obviously new sack suit, had a carnation in his buttonhole, came in with an air of marked hurry, and carried a roll of papers.

"I thought I must have a talk with you," said he, "on the evidence in that Bunn's Ferry land case. The time for taking evidence is rapidly passing, and the court warned us that it wouldn't be extended again. That proof you must furnish, or we shall be beaten."

"Yes--yes, I see," said Amidon, who knew absolutely nothing about the matter. "We should feel really annoyed by such a termination!"

"Annoyed!" exclaimed the lawyer. "Say, Brassfield, that reminds me of Artemus Ward's statement that he was 'ashamed' when some one died! You'd lose the best wells you've got. And it would involve those transfers to the Waldrons, and might carry them down."

"The Waldrons!" exclaimed Florian.

"Why, I mean Miss Bessie and her aunt," said Edgington. "I mean bankruptcy---- But we've gone all over that before."

Amidon nodded, with an air of knowing all about the matter.

"Lots of times," said he. "And this evidence is----? Please give me the exact requirements--er, again."

"The exact requirements," said Edgington, "as I have frequently shown you, and without its doing much good, are to prove that some time in March, 1896, you did not make a partnership agreement with this man Corkery by which you were to share with him the proceeds of your oil-prospecting, and under which he went into possession of this tract of land. He has a line of testimony which shows that you did. Proving a negative is rather unusual, but about the only thing which will save you is an alibi. Now you must pardon the expression, but you've always evaded my questions as to your whereabouts prior to June of that year. You've never flatly denied Corkery's story, but if it weren't for the inherent improbability of it, I'd have given up the fight long ago, for you have not helped as a client should. You haven't confided----"

"But I will!" said Amidon energetically. "The man's a perjurer, and I'll prove it! All that time I was in Wisconsin. I was--I'll prove where I was----"

"Good!" cried Edgington, noting a tendency to falter. "And now for the names and addresses of a few witnesses, and we'll go after them!"

"Witnesses--yes, yes--we shall need witnesses, won't we?" faltered Amidon. "Say, Mr. Edgington, I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll turn you over to Blodgett."

"The old gentleman at the hotel?"

"The same," replied Amidon. "He was my lawyer, years ago. I'll send him to you directly this afternoon."

Edgington made some notes in a book.

"Very well," said he. "I'm glad that puzzle is in process of solution. And now one thing further, and I am done. This is a question of local politics. You know the talks we've had with the fellows about this trolley franchise, and the advisability of making you mayor. We all agree that your interests and mine and those of all our crowd demand your election to the place----"

"Me mayor!" shouted Amidon. "Me run for office! Why, Mr. Edgington, you must be crazy!"

"Well, this--certainly--is refreshing!" expostulated Edgington, in apparent amazement. "When can anything be supposed to be settled, between gentlemen, if that isn't? Why, confound it, didn't we make up the complete slate, including control of the Common Council? And aren't we to have an exclusive franchise on all the streets, with your signature as mayor? Of course, you're joking now. Why, we're right on the eve of the caucuses, and with Conlon in line everything will go as it ought. I mean Barney Conlon, the labor leader. Since you've come back from this trip of yours, everything seems to be going in unexpected ways--and somehow you've given offense to Conlon. Do you know what it was?"

"No," answered Amidon, with some heat. "I don't know what it was! I don't know Conlon, and I don't know anything about this business except this: that if you think I'm going to sneak into office for the purpose of stealing the streets of this town, you don't know Florian Amidon, that's all!"

"Don't know what? Don't know whom?"

"Don't know Flo--ah--me! Me!"

"Then you won't see Barney Conlon?"

"I won't foul my hands with the dirty mess! I won't----"

"Dirty mess, indeed!" retorted Edgington, "when the best business men---- Oh, well, if that's the way you feel---- Why didn't you say so, instead of---- I think we'd best not discuss the thing any further, Mr. Brassfield; and returning to legal matters, where we are happily at one, let me remind you that you are to send Judge Blodgett up to see me regarding the Corkery case this afternoon. Good day, Mr. Brassfield!"

Mr. Edgington went forth from Amidon's presence in a state of mind which can be appreciated by no one but some "good" citizen who has perfected all the preliminaries for securing a particularly fat financial prize by the cheap and simple device of a popular vote, and finds the man on whom he relies going off into a fanciful ism induced by some maggot of so-called conscientiousness. Any one ought to be able to see that there is nothing wrong in accepting gifts from those able to give: and who is more able than the public? Everybody would be better off for the arrangement contemplated, and no one the worse. So reasoned Mr. Edgington as he saw with chagrin the Bellevale franchise slipping away, and with it the core of their ambitious project of interurban lines connecting half a dozen cities. Bellevale, with its water-power, was the hub of it; and to lose here by such a sudden exhibition of so-called "civic patriotism"--Edgington knew the patter of these reformers--was disgusting, and all the more so from the fact that the one to blame was Brassfield, whose ethical attitude had always been so "safe and sane" in business matters.

He must find some way of re-forming the lines, and adjusting the action of the machine--now engaged in grinding out Brassfield's nomination--so as to produce other grist just as good, if that were possible. It was ticklish business, but it must be done. The time was short, but before the caucuses met a new candidate must be found, and the word passed down the line that the dear people had changed their minds over night on the subject of the next mayor.

To decide, with Mr. Edgington (who fancied that he resembled the first Napoleon), was to act, and almost instantly, his forces, hastily mobilized, began an enveloping movement for the purpose of surrounding and bringing into camp a proper candidate for the local chief magistracy.

Mr. Amidon was flushed after this encounter. Mr. Edgington's cool manner of approaching him with this questionable and shady political job had generated some heat in Florian--a man always possessed of strong convictions concerning civic purity. He was offended; yet he knew that it was to the turpitude of Brassfield that he owed this, rather than to any fault of Edgington's.

"How could such a fellow as Brassfield reap such success!" was Amidon's mental ejaculation. "Ready to rob the community, he enjoys the confidence of all; full of the propensities of Don Juan, he wins the respect and love of Elizabeth Waldron! Shameful commentary upon society, and---- Yes, Miss Strong, who is there? Judge Blodgett: send him right in. . . . Judge, I'm glad you came in. I'm very glad! I need your advice and aid."

"All right," said the judge, biting a cigar. "What's up, Florian?"

"You've seen a Mr. Edgington?"

"Your lawyer," replied the judge. "The _Notes_ tell all about him."

"Well," resumed Amidon, "he's been here, and I learn that there is some very important litigation pending, which we've got to win, because it involves others--Miss Waldron and her aunt--and this man Brassfield never could give Edgington the evidence he needed in order to win."

"Why couldn't he?"

"Because," said Amidon, with the air of a man uttering something of the deepest significance, "it involves matters happening before June, 1896, and Brassfield was not in existence until the twenty-seventh of June! I've promised Edgington that you will get him the evidence he wants."

"What's the nub of the case?" asked the judge.

"A man claims I gave him some rights--or that Brassfield did--you understand?--"

"I see."

"--in March, 1896."

"H'm!" exclaimed the judge contemptuously. "March, eh? Why, we can subpoena the whole town of Hazelhurst, and show that you were at that time acting as a pillar of society there, every day in that year, up to June twenty-seventh!"

"But don't you see," said Amidon, "that proving this makes my whole story public?"

Judge Blodgett thoughtfully gazed into space.

"Yes, it would appear that way," said he, at last; "but is it necessarily so? You can testify that you were in Hazelhurst at that time, and legally, that's the same thing as saying that Brassfield was--I guess; and I'll swear to it, too; and if they aren't too searching on cross-examination, we may slide through--but there'll be some ticklish spots. I'll see Mr. Edgington, and find out just how strong a fabric of perjury we've got to go against. We may have to get more witnesses--and that'll be thin ice, too. I'll look in again this afternoon."

"Please do so," replied Mr. Amidon. "Look at these letters! Do you suppose your _Notes_ would shed any light on what they're driving at?"

The judge looked them over.

"I don't remember anything in the _Notes_," said he, "regarding these matters. But you could take 'em up to the hotel, and Madame le Claire could put you to sleep and talk it out of you in five minutes."

"I'll do it!" said Amidon. "I'll get Brassfield's views on them, confound him. I'll do this while you're with Edgington. Good-by until after luncheon."

Madame le Claire was examining Mr. Brassfield with reference to the unanswered letters. Professor Blatherwick was engaged in taking down his answers. In a disastrous moment, Mr. Alderson knocked at the door, and, following his knocking, delivered a breathless message to Brassfield that an important telegram demanded instant attention.

"All right," replied Mr. Brassfield cheerily, "I'll toddle right down to the office with you, my boy. Excuse me, Madame; you may rely on my seeking a resumption of this pleasant interview at the earliest possible moment. _Au revoir_!"

Madame le Claire was perplexed. Should she allow him to go out in this hypnotic state? Could she exercise her art in Alderson's presence? While she debated, Mr. Brassfield airily bowed himself out, and was gone!

Brassfield was gone, that was clear: but no system of Subliminal Engineering had any rule for calculating the results of his escape back into the world from which he had for a fortnight or so been absent. What would he be, and what would he do? Would he return the same hard-headed man of business who had won riches in five short years? Or would he be changed by the return to the normal--his equilibrium made unstable by the tendency to revert to his older self? How would he adjust himself to the things done by Amidon? How would the change affect his relations with Miss Waldron and this bright-haired inamorata so balefully nearing the foreground, like an approaching comet? How would the professor and Judge Blodgett stand with this new factor in the problem? Would he continue to care for her, his rescuer? Owing to some things which had taken place in the Brassfield intervals, her heart fluttered at the thought of a possibly permanent Eugene.

For be it remembered, that many things had taken place in these days of Bellevale life. The situation had, of course, been changing daily by subsurface mutations which the intelligent student of this history will not need to have explained to him. For instance (and herein the explanation of that fluttering of Madame le Claire's heart) such things as these:

Bellevale is not so large a place that neighbors' affairs are not observed of neighbor. Prior to the elaboration of the law of thought-transference, there was no way of accounting for the universality of knowledge of other people's affairs which certain Bellevale circles enjoyed. The good gossiping housewives along the highways leading into the town are often able to tell the exact contents of the packages brought home by their neighbors, under the seats of their buggies and farm-wagons and late at night; but this is a phenomenon not at all unusual. Neither is it in the least strange that, in town or country, John and Sarah could not sit out an evening together in the parlor or settin'-room without all that occurred being talked over, with perfect certainty as to facts, in the next day's meeting of the Missionary Society or the Monday Club. But what Phyllis thought, what were the plans of Thestylis, and how Jane felt when William jilted her, and why William did it--all of which difficult circumstances were canvassed with equal certitude--are things, the knowledge of which, as I said above, was not to be accounted for on any theory at all consistent with respect for the people possessing it, until thought-transference came into fashion. Now all is clear, and our debt to science is increased by another large item.

Mr. Brassfield and his affairs were as a city set upon a hill, and could not be hid. There was a maid in Elizabeth's home, and a maiden aunt who had confidential friends. A stenographer and bookkeepers were employed in the counting-room of the Brassfield Oil Company, and the stenographer had a friend in the milliner's shop, and an admirer who was a clerk in one of the banks. There were clubs and other organizations, social, religious and literary; and the people in all of them had tongues wherewith to talk, and ears for hearing.

Hence:

At the meeting of the Society for Ethical Research, Mrs. Meyer read an essay on "What _Parsifal_ Has Taught Me," during the reading of which Mrs. Alvord described Miss Waldron's trousseau to Miss Finch and Doctor Julia Brown. Because of the conversation among these three, the president asked Doctor Brown, first of all, to discuss the paper. And Doctor Julia, who talked bass and had coquettish fluffy blond bangs and a greatly overtaxed corsage, said that she fully agreed with the many and deeply beautiful thoughts expressed in the paper.

"I'm sincerely glad _Parsifal_ taught her something!" said the fair M.D. to her companions, as she resumed her seat. Mrs. Meyer was the only woman in the town who had ever been to Bayreuth, she added short-windedly in explanation of her remarks, and had lobbied herself into a place on the program on the strength of that fact.

"Does Bess know," asked Miss Finch, "about this mesmerist person?"

"Oh, there isn't anything there," said Doctor Brown, "I feel sure. Though his inti--ah, friendship with this Le Claire woman is, just at this time, in bad taste. But all men are natural polygamists, you know."

"They say," said the voice of a member from across the room, "that it will be quite a palace--throw everything else in Bellevale in the shade--entirely so."

"They are all talking of it," said Mrs. Alvord. "Jim says it seems odd to have this Mr. Blodgett looking into the Brassfield business. But everything is odd, now--the hypnotist and Mr. Blodgett, and Daisy Scarlett; she's still here."

"O----o!" said Doctor Brown, in a sinuous barytone circumflex.

"Really," said Miss Finch, who wore her dress high about the neck, and whose form was a symphony in angles, "such promiscuous associations may be shocking, but as to surprise--who knows anything of his life before he came here?"

"Judge Blodgett," said Doctor Brown, "told a friend of mine that he had known Brassfield from infancy."

"The first light Bellevale has ever received on a dark past," said Miss Finch, "if it is light. And how strangely he acts! Everybody notices it. Always so chatty and almost voluble before, and now--why, he's dreadfully boorish. You know how he treated you, Miss Brown!"

"Yes, and he knows how I treated him for it!" said Doctor Brown. "I propose to call people down when they act so with me!"

"Quite right," said Mrs. Alvord, "quite correct, Doctor. Oh, what a change! And who has changed for the worse lately more than Bessie Waldron? Pale, silent and clearly unhappy. I can't attach any importance to that affair of the strange woman with the striped hair; but that Miss Scarlett matter--that's quite different. Jim and I saw the beginning of that up in the mountains last summer. Daisy Scarlett is a queer girl, so wild and hoidenish--but the people who know her in Allentown just think the world of her, the same as do the people in Bellevale--and her appearance here right after the announcement of the engagement means something. Poor Bess! Hush! There she comes. Oh, Bessie, it's so sweet of you to come, even if you are late! Everybody has been saying such sweet things of you!"

"How kind of them!" said Elizabeth. "Has _Parsifal_ received any attention?"

At the club, of course, no such gossip as that uttered at the meeting of the Society for Ethical Research was heard. Men are above such things. To be sure Alvord and Slater and Edgington and the rest of the "the gang" did exchange views on some matters involving the welfare of the club--and in the course of duty.

"I tell you," said Slater, "Brass has been practising that French doctrine about hunting for the woman--a little too industriously. They're getting to be something--something----"

"Fierce," suggested Alvord.

"Well, that isn't quite what I meant to say," said Slater, "but pretty near. 'Terrible as an army with banners,' you know, and condemned near as numerous."

"It's changed Brassfield like a coat of paint, this engagement," said Edgington. "I saw something last week that showed me more than you could print in a book as big as the Annual Digest. You see, he went sort of gravitating down by where the sewer gang was at work, like a man in a strange country full of hostiles, and although he must have been conscious of the fact that he's slated for mayor in the spring, he never showed that he knew of the presence of a human being, to say nothing of a voter, in the whole gang, and Barney Conlon's gang, too. Why, he'd better have done anything than ignore 'em! He'd better a darn sight have stood and sung _Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill!_ as a political move. Now that shows a revolution in his nature. It's uncanny, and it'll play the very deuce with the slate if it goes on."

"Well, you all know what took place at his counting-room," asked Slater, "the day after he got back from New York? Old Stevens resigned, on the street the night before, and Brass didn't seem to know any more than to accept his resignation. Hired him back since, I've heard, but he ought not to have noticed it. He certainly has gone off badly."

"I knew a fellow once," said Edgington, "who went sort of crazy on the girl question--batty. D'ye s'pose this engagement----"

"They change to their lady friends," said Slater, "sometimes. But he--why, he passed me a dozen times with a cold stare!"

"Me, too," said Edgington, "and he didn't seem to know Flossie Smith when he met her, and Doctor Julia Brown gave him a calling-down on the street--a public lecture on etiquette. Colonel McCorkle claims to have been insulted by him, and won't serve any longer on the same committees with him in the Commercial Association. And he stays at the hotel all the time, and seems afraid to leave this old judge, and collogues with the German professor and the occultist--and, let me say, I've seen cripples in the hospital that were worse-looking than she is!--and what in thunder it means beats me."

"He wants the judge and the professor at our supper next week," added Slater.

"I've sent 'em invitations," said Alvord. "Anything to please the patient. I could tell you a good deal about this, fellows; but 'Gene and I are brothers and closer than brothers; and F. D. and B. goes with me; but it won't hurt anything for you to know that he's got carloads of trouble, and you haven't any of you come within a mile of the mark. He told me all about it the night he got back from New York. I think it will blow over if things can be kept from blowing up instead, for a few days--slumbering volcano--woman scorned--hell's fury, you know; don't ask me any more. But this hiding out won't do."

"Well, I should think not," said Slater. "We've got to get him going about as usual or there'll be questions asked and publicity--those red-headed women are pretty vivacious conversationalists when they get mad, and you can't tell what may be pulled off, even if he acts as natural as life."

"This supper ought to help some," said Edgington.

"It will," said Alvord. "We must make it a hum-dinger. And we must see that he shows himself of tenor at the club and lodge meetings and hops. Why, it's shameful, the way we've let him drop out."

And men being above gossip, at this point the meeting dissolved.

At the hotel, conference after conference had taken place in the parlor of Professor Blatherwick, and Blodgett and Blatherwick's _Notes_ had been studied out most assiduously. Judge Blodgett and Florian Amidon had spent their days at the counting-house, and an increased force of clerks worked ceaselessly in making up statements and balances showing the condition of the business. Amidon could now draw checks in the name of Brassfield with no more than a dim sense of committing forgery. The banks, however, refused to honor them at first, and the tellers noted the fact that after his return from New York Mr. Brassfield adopted a new style of signature, and wondered at it. Some noticed a change in all his handwriting, but in these days of the typewriter such a thing makes little difference. His abstention from bowling (to the playing of which Brassfield had been devoted), and his absolute failure at billiards, were discussed in sporting circles, and accounted for on the theory that he had "gone stale" since this love-affair had become the absorbing business of his life. No one understood, however, his sudden interest in photography, and his marvelous skill in it. He seemed to be altogether a transformed man.

"I am beginning to see through this," said Amidon, referring to the business.

"Yes," said the judge, "this side of the affair is assuming a pretty satisfactory aspect. But your reputation is suffering by the sort of constraint you've been under. These things are important. A man's behavior is worth money to him. Many a man gets credit at the bank on the strength of the safe and conservative vices he practises. Business requires you to act more like Brassfield. A man who uses a good deal of money must be like other people who use a good deal of money. He mustn't have isms, and he mustn't be for any reforms except impractical ones, and he mustn't have the reputation of being 'queer.' Isn't that so, Professor?"

"Kvite uncontrofertible," said the professor. "You must minkle up vit more beople."

"And in other matters besides business," said the judge; "boxes of flowers every few minutes are all right, but some things require personal attention."

Amidon blushed.

"You see," said he, "if every one were not so strange; if part of the people were as familiar to me as I am to them, it wouldn't be so trying. I suppose these receptions, and other functions to follow, I must attend alone. But you two are going to that banquet with me?"

"Oh, certainly," said the judge. "I want to see just what sort of a gang you've been forgathering with here. The folks at Hazelhurst----"

"Must never know, Judge! And you, Professor?"

"I shall be more tan bleaced. Supliminally gonsidered, I rekard it as te shance of a lifetime."

"Well," said Amidon, "you are very good, and I am glad that's settled. Now I want you to grant me another favor--or Clara, rather. I should be more than glad if she would ask Brassfield about some things that there's no need for you people to hear. It's nothing about the business. Won't you see if she will give me a--a--demonstration?"

The judge and the professor disappeared, and soon word came that Madame le Claire would give him audience. Amidon's heart beat stiflingly as he came into her presence. For this man's conscience was a most insubordinate conscience, and held as wrong the things felt and thought, as well as things said and done; and his remorse was as that of an abandoned but repentant jilt. But when he saw how cheerfully she smiled, he grew easier in his mind. The women always have such a matter fully under control--I mean the other party's mind.

"Well?" said she interrogatively--"at last? I have been wondering why I was brought down here?"

"It must have been very dull and lonesome----"

"Oh, no!" she answered. "I am a business woman, you know, and I haven't been idle. And now, there is something you need, my friend? Let us begin at once."

There were definite repudiation of claims to tenderness, clear denial of resentment, in her tone. Amidon brightened and reddened. He stammered like a boy teased by reference to his first love-affair.

"You are wonderfully kind," he said. "I wanted to ask you to have this Brassfield tell you all he will about the wedding--the date, and everything you can get out of the fellow. And have him act as naturally as you can, so as to see more clearly how he carries himself. You see what I want, don't you?"

"I think so," she returned. "Conversation must be a little difficult, isn't it? You remembered some of the things I told you about?"

"Difficult?" he exclaimed. "Oh, Clara, it's impossible! It's so much so, that I hardly dare go back any more. I'm sending flowers and notes and doing the best I can; but it won't do at all: I must call oftener--must! And I'm afraid I have spoiled everything."

"Then you find the lady quite--quite endurable?"

"She's adorable," went on Florian, with the gush which comes at the first opportunity to discuss the dear one with a sympathetic third party. "She's perfectly exquisite! I have thought of nothing, dreamed of nothing, since I left her, except, except----"

"Ah!" said Clara, "the situation must be perfectly lovely--for you--both---- And I'm sure you got along nicely."

"No, no! I spoiled everything, I know I did. But bring this fellow up and ask him those things, please; and also about a Miss Scarlett---- No, leave that out. Just about the wedding, and about--I was going to ask about our house; but the judge found that out, where it is, and all. Just about the--the things between her and me, a little more, you know!"

The hypnotic subject yields to control more and more readily by repeated surrender. So there was little of gazing into the party-colored eyes now.

"You will soon sleep," said Madame le Claire, in that dominating way of hers; "and when you wake you will be Eugene Brassfield just as he used to be, and the room and all the surroundings, and myself--all will seem familiar, and you will be quite at home with me. Sleep, sleep!"

Her hand swept down and closed his eyes, and he lay back in his chair entranced. Madame le Claire sat long and looked at him yearningly. She smoothed back the hair from his brow with many soft touches, and stooped and softly kissed his forehead. Then she lightly tapped his wrist, and sharply said, "Wake!"

Eugene Brassfield opened his eyes with a smile. There was something still faintly suggestive of tenderness in the look with which Madame le Claire regarded him, and he returned it with the air of a man to whom such looks are neither unusual nor repugnant.

"We were just talking," said she, with the air of reminding him of a topic from which he had wandered, "about your wedding. When is it to be?"

"The appointed date," said he, "is April the fifth; but, of course, I shall move for an earlier one if possible."

"I should think," remarked Madame le Claire, "that the date fixed would give Miss Waldron all too short a time for preparation."

"From a woman's standpoint," said Mr. Brassfield, "it probably seems so. But you and I can surely find matters of more mutual interest to talk about, can't we?"

"Perhaps," said the girl, "but I don't think of anything just now. Do you?"

"Well, for one thing," said he, "I have just found out what makes your eyes so beautiful."

"Wouldn't it be just as well to cease discovering things of that kind? It's so short a time to the fifth of April, you know."

"I've made all my money," said Brassfield, "by never quitting discovering. I like it. And this last find especially."

"I think there are other lines of investigation," said she, "which demand your time and attention."

"Oh, pshaw!" said he. "Don't be so prudish. You know that your eyes are beautiful, and you are not really offended when I tell you so. Such eyes are the books in which I like to read--I can understand them better than Browning, or the old Persian soak. It's not unpleasant to get a volume you understand--at times."

"Why, Mr. Amidon--Brassfield, I mean--aren't you ashamed of yourself!"

"A little," said he; "not much, though. And who is this 'Mr. Amman,' or whatever the name is, that is so much in your mind that you call me by his name when you speak without thinking?"

"A dear friend of mine!"

"Well, now, if you should happen to see something agreeable in me, and should let me know about it, I shouldn't throw your Mr. Amden, or Amidon, at your head. Why not forget about the rest of the world for a while? We can be in only one place at a time, and so, really, our whole world just now has only us two. You oughtn't to repel the only person in the wide, wide world; you won't, will you?"

"Don't be foolish!"

"Don't be wasteful! This may be the only world of this kind we shall be allowed to have. Come over and sit by me and be nice to me, won't you?"

"I certainly shall do nothing of the kind!"

"No? Ah, how wasteful of opportunity! Well, then, I shall have to come to you!"

Oh, the depravity of society in these days, and oh, the unpleasantness of setting these things down! But, on the other hand, what a comfort it is to think that men as base as Brassfield are so rare that you and I, my boy, have probably never met a specimen. And if you ever find, my love, that any person in whom you have any tender interest has ever behaved in a way similar to the conduct of Brassfield, you should give the prisoner the benefit of every doubt, and accord full weight to the precedent contained in this history, and to the fact that it was Brassfield and not Amidon who did this. A man can not be blamed for lapsing into the Brassfield state. A man should be acquitted--eh? Defending some one? Why, certainly not! And how long this paragraph is growing! Yes, I feel sure Clara Blatherwick repulsed these advances as she should, and that Brassfield, being fully under "control," did not--why, of course not, as you say!

But I am going no further with the matter now; except to say that in something like an hour Mr. Amidon departed much perturbed by the prospect of the nearness of his happiness, fully convinced of his unworthiness, and quakingly uncertain as to many things, but most of all, just then, as to his clothes!

"This man Brassfield," said he to himself, "seems to have been a good deal of a dude, and Elizabeth--the darling!--will expect me to be fully up to vogue in this regard--as she will be in all things. And I don't believe a thing has been done about clothes."

Meantime, Madame le Claire walked up and down in a locked chamber, struggling with her grief.

"Oh, it is hopeless, hopeless!" said the poor girl to herself, over and over again. "Florian, my darling Florian, whom I found blind and wandering in the wilderness, and took by the hand and guided to the light--Florian has gone from me! She has taken him, just as she took him before. But the man she thinks loves her--her Eugene--I'm sure he's coming to love me; and to be tired of her! And I could keep him Brassfield, if I chose--if I chose! I wonder--I wonder if it would be wrong? What would she do if she had my power? Twice I had to try, before I could restore him. I could! I could!"

Small wonder, therefore, that Madame le Claire sat wild-eyed and excited, and flew fearfully to Judge Blodgett and the professor, when Mr. Brassfield went free, with Alderson at heel. And all the time, as the crew of a ship carry on the routine of drill while the torpedo is speeding for her hull, these social amenities went on all unconscious of the explosion now imminent.