________________________________________________
_ "It is so good of you to come early," said Mrs. Porter, as
Alice Langham entered the drawing-room. "I want to ask a favor
of you. I'm sure you won't mind. I would ask one of the
debutantes, except that they're always so cross if one puts
them next to men they don't know and who can't help them, and so
I thought I'd just ask you, you're so good-natured. You don't
mind, do you?"
``I mind being called good-natured,'' said Miss Langham, smiling.
``Mind what, Mrs. Porter?'' she asked.
``He is a friend of George's,'' Mrs. Porter explained, vaguely.
``He's a cowboy. It seems he was very civil to George when he
was out there shooting in New Mexico, or Old Mexico, I don't
remember which. He took George to his hut and gave him things to
shoot, and all that, and now he is in New York with a letter of
introduction. It's just like George. He may be a most
impossible sort of man, but, as I said to Mr. Porter, the people
I've asked can't complain, because I don't know anything more
about him than they do. He called to-day when I was out and left
his card and George's letter of introduction, and as a man had
failed me for to-night, I just thought I would kill two birds
with one stone, and ask him to fill his place, and he's here.
And, oh, yes,'' Mrs. Porter added, ``I'm going to put him next to
you, do you mind?''
``Unless he wears leather leggings and long spurs I shall mind
very much,'' said Miss Langham.
``Well, that's very nice of you,'' purred Mrs. Porter, as she
moved away. ``He may not be so bad, after all; and I'll put
Reginald King on your other side, shall I?'' she asked, pausing
and glancing back.
The look on Miss Langham's face, which had been one of amusement,
changed consciously, and she smiled with polite acquiescence.
``As you please, Mrs. Porter,'' she answered. She raised her
eyebrows slightly. ``I am, as the politicians say, `in the hands
of my friends.' ''
``Entirely too much in the hands of my friends,'' she repeated,
as she turned away. This was the twelfth time during that same
winter that she and Mr. King had been placed next to one another
at dinner, and it had passed beyond the point when she could
say that it did not matter what people thought as long as she and
he understood. It had now reached that stage when she was not
quite sure that she understood either him or herself. They had
known each other for a very long time; too long, she sometimes
thought, for them ever to grow to know each other any better.
But there was always the chance that he had another side, one
that had not disclosed itself, and which she could not discover
in the strict social environment in which they both lived. And
she was the surer of this because she had once seen him when he
did not know that she was near, and he had been so different that
it had puzzled her and made her wonder if she knew the real
Reggie King at all.
It was at a dance at a studio, and some French pantomimists gave
a little play. When it was over, King sat in the corner talking
to one of the Frenchwomen, and while he waited on her he was
laughing at her and at her efforts to speak English. He was
telling her how to say certain phrases and not telling her
correctly, and she suspected this and was accusing him of it, and
they were rhapsodizing and exclaiming over certain delightful
places and dishes of which they both knew in Paris with the
enthusiasm of two children. Miss Langham saw him off his guard
for the first time and instead of a somewhat bored and clever
man of the world, he appeared as sincere and interested as a boy.
When he joined her, later, the same evening, he was as
entertaining as usual, and as polite and attentive as he had been
to the Frenchwoman, but he was not greatly interested, and his
laugh was modulated and not spontaneous. She had wondered that
night, and frequently since then, if, in the event of his asking
her to marry him, which was possible, and of her accepting him,
which was also possible, whether she would find him, in the
closer knowledge of married life, as keen and lighthearted with
her as he had been with the French dancer. If he would but treat
her more like a comrade and equal, and less like a prime minister
conferring with his queen! She wanted something more intimate
than the deference that he showed her, and she did not like his
taking it as an accepted fact that she was as worldly-wise as
himself, even though it were true.
She was a woman and wanted to be loved, in spite of the fact that
she had been loved by many men--at least it was so supposed--and
had rejected them.
Each had offered her position, or had wanted her because she was
fitted to match his own great state, or because he was ambitious,
or because she was rich. The man who could love her as she
once believed men could love, and who could give her something
else besides approval of her beauty and her mind, had not
disclosed himself. She had begun to think that he never would,
that he did not exist, that he was an imagination of the
playhouse and the novel. The men whom she knew were careful to
show her that they appreciated how distinguished was her
position, and how inaccessible she was to them. They seemed to
think that by so humbling themselves, and by emphasizing her
position they pleased her best, when it was what she wanted them
to forget. Each of them would draw away backward, bowing and
protesting that he was unworthy to raise his eyes to such a
prize, but that if she would only stoop to him, how happy his
life would be. Sometimes they meant it sincerely; sometimes they
were gentlemanly adventurers of title, from whom it was a
business proposition, and in either case she turned restlessly
away and asked herself how long it would be before the man would
come who would pick her up on his saddle and gallop off with her,
with his arm around her waist and his horse's hoofs clattering
beneath them, and echoing the tumult in their hearts.
She had known too many great people in the world to feel
impressed with her own position at home in America; but she
sometimes compared herself to the Queen in ``In a Balcony,''
and repeated to herself, with mock seriousness:--
``And you the marble statue all the time
They praise and point at as preferred to life,
Yet leave for the first breathing woman's cheek,
First dancer's, gypsy's or street balladine's!''
And if it were true, she asked herself, that the man she had
imagined was only an ideal and an illusion, was not King the best
of the others, the unideal and ever-present others? Every one
else seemed to think so. The society they knew put them
constantly together and approved. Her people approved. Her own
mind approved, and as her heart was not apparently ever to be
considered, who could say that it did not approve as well? He
was certainly a very charming fellow, a manly, clever companion,
and one who bore about him the evidences of distinction and
thorough breeding. As far as family went, the Kings were as old
as a young country could expect, and Reggie King was, moreover,
in spite of his wealth, a man of action and ability. His yacht
journeyed from continent to continent, and not merely up the
Sound to Newport, and he was as well known and welcome to the
consuls along the coasts of Africa and South America as he was at
Cowes or Nice. His books of voyages were recognized by
geographical societies and other serious bodies, who had given
him permission to put long disarrangements of the alphabet after
his name. She liked him because she had grown to be at home with
him, because it was good to know that there was some one who
would not misunderstand her, and who, should she so indulge
herself, would not take advantage of any appeal she might make to
his sympathy, who would always be sure to do the tactful thing
and the courteous thing, and who, while he might never do a great
thing, could not do an unkind one.
Miss Langham had entered the Porters' drawing-room after the
greater number of the guests had arrived, and she turned from her
hostess to listen to an old gentleman with a passion for golf, a
passion in which he had for a long time been endeavoring to
interest her. She answered him and his enthusiasm in kind, and
with as much apparent interest as she would have shown in a
matter of state. It was her principle to be all things to all
men, whether they were great artists, great diplomats, or great
bores. If a man had been pleading with her to leave the
conservatory and run away with him, and another had come up
innocently and announced that it was his dance, she would have
said: ``Oh, is it?'' with as much apparent delight as though his
coming had been the one bright hope in her life.
She was growing enthusiastic over the delights of golf and
unconsciously making a very beautiful picture of herself in her
interest and forced vivacity, when she became conscious for the
first time of a strange young man who was standing alone before
the fireplace looking at her, and frankly listening to all the
nonsense she was talking. She guessed that he had been listening
for some time, and she also saw, before he turned his eyes
quickly away, that he was distinctly amused. Miss Langham
stopped gesticulating and lowered her voice, but continued to
keep her eyes on the face of the stranger, whose own eyes were
wandering around the room, to give her, so she guessed, the idea
that he had not been listening, but that she had caught him at it
in the moment he had first looked at her. He was a tall, broad-
shouldered youth, with a handsome face, tanned and dyed, either
by the sun or by exposure to the wind, to a deep ruddy brown,
which contrasted strangely with his yellow hair and mustache, and
with the pallor of the other faces about him. He was a stranger
apparently to every one present, and his bearing suggested, in
consequence, that ease of manner which comes to a person who is
not only sure of himself, but who has no knowledge of the claims
and pretensions to social distinction of those about him. His
most attractive feature was his eyes, which seemed to observe
all that was going on, not only what was on the surface, but
beneath the surface, and that not rudely or covertly but with the
frank, quick look of the trained observer. Miss Langham found it
an interesting face to watch, and she did not look away from it.
She was acquainted with every one else in the room, and hence she
knew this must be the cowboy of whom Mrs. Porter had spoken, and
she wondered how any one who had lived the rough life of the West
could still retain the look when in formal clothes of one who was
in the habit of doing informal things in them.
Mrs. Porter presented her cowboy simply as ``Mr. Clay, of whom I
spoke to you,'' with a significant raising of the eyebrows, and
the cowboy made way for King, who took Miss Langham in. He
looked frankly pleased, however, when he found himself next to
her again, but did not take advantage of it throughout the first
part of the dinner, during which time he talked to the young
married woman on his right, and Miss Langham and King continued
where they had left off at their last meeting. They knew each
other well enough to joke of the way in which they were thrown
into each other's society, and, as she said, they tried to make
the best of it. But while she spoke, Miss Langham was
continually conscious of the presence of her neighbor, who piqued
her interest and her curiosity in different ways. He seemed
to be at his ease, and yet from the manner in which he glanced up
and down the table and listened to snatches of talk on either
side of him he had the appearance of one to whom it was all new,
and who was seeing it for the first time.
There was a jolly group at one end of the long table, and they
wished to emphasize the fact by laughing a little more
hysterically at their remarks than the humor of those witticisms
seemed to justify. A daughter-in-law of Mrs. Porter was their
leader in this, and at one point she stopped in the middle of a
story and waving her hand at the double row of faces turned in
her direction, which had been attracted by the loudness of her
voice, cried, gayly, ``Don't listen. This is for private
circulation. It is not a jeune-fille story.'' The
debutantes at the table continued talking again in steady,
even tones, as though they had not heard the remark or the first
of the story, and the men next to them appeared equally
unconscious. But the cowboy, Miss Langham noted out of the
corner of her eye, after a look of polite surprise, beamed with
amusement and continued to stare up and down the table as though
he had discovered a new trait in a peculiar and interesting
animal. For some reason, she could not tell why, she felt
annoyed with herself and with her friends, and resented the
attitude which the new-comer assumed toward them.
``Mrs. Porter tells me that you know her son George?'' she said.
He did not answer her at once, but bowed his head in assent, with
a look of interrogation, as though, so it seemed to her, he had
expected her, when she did speak, to say something less
conventional.
``Yes,'' he replied, after a pause, ``he joined us at Ayutla. It
was the terminus of the Jalisco and Mexican Railroad then. He
came out over the road and went in from there with an outfit
after mountain lions. I believe he had very good sport.''
``That is a very wonderful road, I am told,'' said King, bending
forward and introducing himself into the conversation with a nod
of the head toward Clay; ``quite a remarkable feat of
engineering.''
``It will open up the country, I believe,'' assented the other,
indifferently.
``I know something of it,'' continued King, ``because I met the
men who were putting it through at Pariqua, when we touched there
in the yacht. They shipped most of their plant to that port, and
we saw a good deal of them. They were a very jolly lot, and they
gave me a most interesting account of their work and its
difficulties.''
Clay was looking at the other closely, as though he was
trying to find something back of what he was saying, but as his
glance seemed only to embarrass King he smiled freely again in
assent, and gave him his full attention.
``There are no men to-day, Miss Langham,'' King exclaimed,
suddenly, turning toward her, ``to my mind, who lead as
picturesque lives as do civil engineers. And there are no men
whose work is as little appreciated.''
``Really?'' said Miss Langham, encouragingly.
``Now those men I met,'' continued King, settling himself with
his side to the table, ``were all young fellows of thirty or
thereabouts, but they were leading the lives of pioneers and
martyrs--at least that's what I'd call it. They were marching
through an almost unknown part of Mexico, fighting Nature at
every step and carrying civilization with them. They were doing
better work than soldiers, because soldiers destroy things, and
these chaps were creating, and making the way straight. They had
no banners either, nor brass bands. They fought mountains and
rivers, and they were attacked on every side by fever and the
lack of food and severe exposure. They had to sit down around a
camp-fire at night and calculate whether they were to tunnel a
mountain, or turn the bed of a river or bridge it. And they knew
all the time that whatever they decided to do out there in the
wilderness meant thousands of dollars to the stockholders
somewhere up in God's country, who would some day hold them to
account for them. They dragged their chains through miles and
miles of jungle, and over flat alkali beds and cactus, and they
reared bridges across roaring canons. We know nothing about them
and we care less. When their work is done we ride over the road
in an observation-car and look down thousands and thousands of
feet into the depths they have bridged, and we never give them a
thought. They are the bravest soldiers of the present day, and
they are the least recognized. I have forgotten their names, and
you never heard them. But it seems to me the civil engineer, for
all that, is the chief civilizer of our century.''
Miss Langham was looking ahead of her with her eyes half-closed,
as though she were going over in her mind the situation King had
described.
``I never thought of that,'' she said. ``It sounds very fine.
As you say, the reward is so inglorious. But that is what makes
it fine.''
The cowboy was looking down at the table and pulling at a flower
in the centre-piece. He had ceased to smile. Miss Langham
turned on him somewhat sharply, resenting his silence, and said,
with a slight challenge in her voice:--
``Do you agree, Mr. Clay,'' she asked, ``or do you prefer the
chocolate-cream soldiers, in red coats and gold lace?''
``Oh, I don't know,'' the young man answered, with some slight
hesitation. ``It's a trade for each of them. The engineer's
work is all the more absorbing, I imagine, when the difficulties
are greatest. He has the fun of overcoming them.''
``You see nothing in it then,'' she asked, ``but a source of
amusement?''
``Oh, yes, a good deal more,'' he replied. ``A livelihood, for
one thing. I--I have been an engineer all my life. I built that
road Mr. King is talking about.''
An hour later, when Mrs. Porter made the move to go, Miss Langham
rose with a protesting sigh. ``I am so sorry,'' she said, ``it
has been most interesting. I never met two men who had visited
so many inaccessible places and come out whole. You have quite
inspired Mr. King, he was never so amusing. But I should like to
hear the end of that adventure; won't you tell it to me in the
other room?''
Clay bowed. ``If I haven't thought of something more interesting
in the meantime,'' he said.
``What I can't understand,'' said King, as he moved up into Miss
Langham's place, ``is how you had time to learn so much of the
rest of the world. You don't act like a man who had spent
his life in the brush.''
``How do you mean?'' asked Clay, smiling--``that I don't use the
wrong forks?''
``No,'' laughed King, ``but you told us that this was your first
visit East, and yet you're talking about England and Vienna and
Voisin's. How is it you've been there, while you have never been
in New York?''
``Well, that's partly due to accident and partly to design,''
Clay answered. ``You see I've worked for English and German and
French companies, as well as for those in the States, and I go
abroad to make reports and to receive instructions. And then I'm
what you call a self-made man; that is, I've never been to
college. I've always had to educate myself, and whenever I did
get a holiday it seemed to me that I ought to put it to the best
advantage, and to spend it where civilization was the furthest
advanced--advanced, at least, in years. When I settle down and
become an expert, and demand large sums for just looking at the
work other fellows have done, then I hope to live in New York,
but until then I go where the art galleries are biggest and where
they have got the science of enjoying themselves down to the very
finest point. I have enough rough work eight months of the year
to make me appreciate that. So whenever I get a few months
to myself I take the Royal Mail to London, and from there to
Paris or Vienna. I think I like Vienna the best. The directors
are generally important people in their own cities, and they ask
one about, and so, though I hope I am a good American, it happens
that I've more friends on the Continent than in the United
States.''
``And how does this strike you?'' asked King, with a movement of
his shoulder toward the men about the dismantled table.
``Oh, I don't know,'' laughed Clay. ``You've lived abroad
yourself; how does it strike you?''
Clay was the first man to enter the drawing-room. He walked
directly away from the others and over to Miss Langham, and,
taking her fan out of her hands as though to assure himself of
some hold upon her, seated himself with his back to every one
else.
``You have come to finish that story?'' she said, smiling.
Miss Langham was a careful young person, and would not have
encouraged a man she knew even as well as she knew King, to talk
to her through dinner, and after it as well. She fully
recognized that because she was conspicuous certain innocent
pleasures were denied her which other girls could enjoy without
attracting attention or comment. But Clay interested her beyond
her usual self, and the look in his eyes was a tribute which
she had no wish to put away from her.
``I've thought of something more interesting to talk about,''
said Clay. ``I'm going to talk about you. You see I've known
you a long time.''
``Since eight o'clock?'' asked Miss Langham.
``Oh, no, since your coming out, four years ago.''
``It's not polite to remember so far back,'' she said. ``Were
you one of those who assisted at that important function? There
were so many there I don't remember.''
``No, I only read about it. I remember it very well; I had
ridden over twelve miles for the mail that day, and I stopped
half-way back to the ranch and camped out in the shade of a rock
and read all the papers and magazines through at one sitting,
until the sun went down and I couldn't see the print. One of the
papers had an account of your coming out in it, and a picture of
you, and I wrote East to the photographer for the original. It
knocked about the West for three months and then reached me at
Laredo, on the border between Texas and Mexico, and I have had it
with me ever since.''
Miss Langham looked at Clay for a moment in silent dismay and
with a perplexed smile.
``Where is it now?'' she asked at last.
``In my trunk at the hotel.''
``Oh,'' she said, slowly. She was still in doubt as to how to
treat this act of unconventionality. ``Not in your watch?'' she
said, to cover up the pause. ``That would have been more in
keeping with the rest of the story.''
The young man smiled grimly, and pulling out his watch pried back
the lid and turned it to her so that she could see a photograph
inside. The face in the watch was that of a young girl in the
dress of a fashion of several years ago. It was a lovely, frank
face, looking out of the picture into the world kindly and
questioningly, and without fear.
``Was I once like that?'' she said, lightly. ``Well, go on.''
``Well,'' he said, with a little sigh of relief, ``I became
greatly interested in Miss Alice Langham, and in her comings out
and goings in, and in her gowns. Thanks to our having a press in
the States that makes a specialty of personalities, I was able to
follow you pretty closely, for, wherever I go, I have my papers
sent after me. I can get along without a compass or a medicine-
chest, but I can't do without the newspapers and the magazines.
There was a time when I thought you were going to marry that
Austrian chap, and I didn't approve of that. I knew things about
him in Vienna. And then I read of your engagement to
others--well--several others; some of them I thought worthy, and
others not. Once I even thought of writing you about it, and
once I saw you in Paris. You were passing on a coach. The man
with me told me it was you, and I wanted to follow the coach in a
fiacre, but he said he knew at what hotel you were stopping, and
so I let you go, but you were not at that hotel, or at any
other--at least, I couldn't find you.''
``What would you have done--?'' asked Miss Langham. ``Never
mind,'' she interrupted, ``go on.''
``Well, that's all,'' said Clay, smiling. ``That's all, at
least, that concerns you. That is the romance of this poor young
man.''
``But not the only one,'' she said, for the sake of saying
something.
``Perhaps not,'' answered Clay, ``but the only one that counts.
I always knew I was going to meet you some day. And now I have
met you.''
``Well, and now that you have met me,'' said Miss Langham,
looking at him in some amusement, ``are you sorry?''
``No--'' said Clay, but so slowly and with such consideration
that Miss Langham laughed and held her head a little higher.
``Not sorry to meet you, but to meet you in such surroundings.''
``What fault do you find with my surroundings?''
``Well, these people,'' answered Clay, ``they are so foolish, so
futile. You shouldn't be here. There must be something else
better than this. You can't make me believe that you choose it.
In Europe you could have a salon, or you could influence
statesmen. There surely must be something here for you to turn
to as well. Something better than golf-sticks and salted
almonds.''
``What do you know of me?'' said Miss Langham, steadily. ``Only
what you have read of me in impertinent paragraphs. How do you
know I am fitted for anything else but just this? You never
spoke with me before to-night.''
``That has nothing to do with it,'' said Clay, quickly. ``Time
is made for ordinary people. When people who amount to anything
meet they don't have to waste months in finding each other out.
It is only the doubtful ones who have to be tested again and
again. When I was a kid in the diamond mines in Kimberley, I
have seen the experts pick out a perfect diamond from the heap at
the first glance, and without a moment's hesitation. It was the
cheap stones they spent most of the afternoon over. Suppose I
HAVE only seen you to-night for the first time; suppose I
shall not see you again, which is quite likely, for I sail
tomorrow for South America--what of that? I am just as sure
of what you are as though I had known you for years.''
Miss Langham looked at him for a moment in silence. Her beauty
was so great that she could take her time to speak. She was not
afraid of losing any one's attention.
``And have you come out of the West, knowing me so well, just to
tell me that I am wasting myself?'' she said. ``Is that all?''
``That is all,'' answered Clay. ``You know the things I would
like to tell you,'' he added, looking at her closely.
``I think I like to be told the other things best,'' she said,
``they are the easier to believe.''
``You have to believe whatever I tell you,'' said Clay, smiling.
The girl pressed her hands together in her lap, and looked at him
curiously. The people about them were moving and making their
farewells, and they brought her back to the present with a start.
``I'm sorry you're going away,'' she said. ``It has been so odd.
You come suddenly up out of the wilderness, and set me to
thinking and try to trouble me with questions about myself, and
then steal away again without stopping to help me to settle them.
Is it fair?'' She rose and put out her hand, and he took it
and held it for a moment, while they stood looking at one
another.
``I am coming back,'' he said, ``and I will find that you have
settled them for yourself.''
``Good-by,'' she said, in so low a tone that the people standing
near them could not hear. ``You haven't asked me for it, you
know, but--I think I shall let you keep that picture.''
``Thank you,'' said Clay, smiling, ``I meant to.''
``You can keep it,'' she continued, turning back, ``because it is
not my picture. It is a picture of a girl who ceased to exist
four years ago, and whom you have never met. Good-night.''
Mr. Langham and Hope, his younger daughter, had been to the
theatre. The performance had been one which delighted Miss Hope,
and which satisfied her father because he loved to hear her
laugh. Mr. Langham was the slave of his own good fortune. By
instinct and education he was a man of leisure and culture, but
the wealth he had inherited was like an unruly child that needed
his constant watching, and in keeping it well in hand he had
become a man of business, with time for nothing else.
Alice Langham, on her return from Mrs. Porter's dinner, found him
in his study engaged with a game of solitaire, while Hope was
kneeling on a chair beside him with her elbows on the table.
Mr. Langham had been troubled with insomnia of late, and so it
often happened that when Alice returned from a ball she would
find him sitting with a novel, or his game of solitaire, and
Hope, who had crept downstairs from her bed, dozing in front of
the open fire and keeping him silent company. The father and the
younger daughter were very close to one another, and had grown
especially so since his wife had died and his son and heir had
gone to college. This fourth member of the family was a great
bond of sympathy and interest between them, and his triumphs and
escapades at Yale were the chief subjects of their conversation.
It was told by the directors of a great Western railroad, who had
come to New York to discuss an important question with Mr.
Langham, that they had been ushered downstairs one night into his
basement, where they had found the President of the Board and his
daughter Hope working out a game of football on the billiard
table. They had chalked it off into what corresponded to five-
yard lines, and they were hurling twenty-two chess-men across it
in ``flying wedges'' and practising the several tricks which
young Langham had intrusted to his sister under an oath of
secrecy. The sight filled the directors with the horrible fear
that business troubles had turned the President's mind, but
after they had sat for half an hour perched on the high chairs
around the table, while Hope excitedly explained the game to
them, they decided that he was wiser than they knew, and each
left the house regretting he had no son worthy enough to bring
``that young girl'' into the Far West.
``You are home early,'' said Mr. Langham, as Alice stood above
him pulling at her gloves. ``I thought you said you were going
on to some dance.''
``I was tired,'' his daughter answered.
``Well, when I'm out,'' commented Hope, ``I won't come home at
eleven o'clock. Alice always was a quitter.''
``A what?'' asked the older sister.
``Tell us what you had for dinner,'' said Hope. ``I know it
isn't nice to ask,'' she added, hastily, ``but I always like to
know.''
``I don't remember,'' Miss Langham answered, smiling at her
father, ``except that he was very much sunburned and had most
perplexing eyes.''
``Oh, of course,'' assented Hope, ``I suppose you mean by that
that you talked with some man all through dinner. Well, I think
there is a time for everything.''
``Father,'' interrupted Miss Langham, ``do you know many
engineers--I mean do you come in contact with them through
the railroads and mines you have an interest in? I am rather
curious about them,'' she said, lightly. ``They seem to be a
most picturesque lot of young men.''
``Engineers? Of course,'' said Mr. Langham, vaguely, with the
ten of spades held doubtfully in air. ``Sometimes we have to
depend upon them altogether. We decide from what the engineering
experts tell us whether we will invest in a thing or not.''
``I don't think I mean the big men of the profession,'' said his
daughter, doubtfully. ``I mean those who do the rough work. The
men who dig the mines and lay out the railroads. Do you know any
of them?''
``Some of them,'' said Mr. Langham, leaning back and shuffling
the cards for a new game. ``Why?''
``Did you ever hear of a Mr. Robert Clay?''
Mr. Langham smiled as he placed the cards one above the other in
even rows. ``Very often,'' he said. ``He sails to-morrow to
open up the largest iron deposits in South America. He goes for
the Valencia Mining Company. Valencia is the capital of Olancho,
one of those little republics down there.''
``Do you--are you interested in that company?'' asked Miss
Langham, seating herself before the fire and holding out her
hands toward it. ``Does Mr. Clay know that you are?''
``Yes--I am interested in it,'' Mr. Langham replied, studying the
cards before him, ``but I don't think Clay knows it--nobody knows
it yet, except the president and the other officers.'' He lifted
a card and put it down again in some indecision. ``It's
generally supposed to be operated by a company, but all the stock
is owned by one man. As a matter of fact, my dear children,''
exclaimed Mr. Langham, as he placed a deuce of clubs upon a deuce
of spades with a smile of content, ``the Valencia Mining Company
is your beloved father.''
``Oh,'' said Miss Langham, as she looked steadily into the fire.
Hope tapped her lips gently with the back of her hand to hide the
fact that she was sleepy, and nudged her father's elbow. ``You
shouldn't have put the deuce there,'' she said, ``you should have
used it to build with on the ace.'' _
Read next: CHAPTER II
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