Hereafter Mr. Ashly Crane must honor any draft that Adelle might make, no matter how "outrageous" it was. (The drafts came fluttering across the ocean on every steamer for ever-increasing amounts until the young heiress was living at the rate of nearly forty thousand dollars a year.) The banker might wonder how a young girl, still nominally in school, could get away with so much money. He might fear that her extravagance would become a habit and carry her even beyond the limits of her large means. But he could not say a word. Miss Comstock, indeed, had put him in a sorry situation for a full-grown banker. The more he thought about the unfortunate episode of his love-making, the more he cursed himself. President West, whose special protege the young banker had always been, held very strict notions about honor and the relation of the officers of the company to its clients. In Adelle's case--that of a minor entrusted to them by the probate court--the president would feel doubly incensed if he suspected that any officer had attempted to take advantage of her unprotected and inexperienced youth. So Mr. Ashly Crane walked softly these days and promptly honored Adelle's drafts. XXI Of course this was precisely what Pussy Comstock had been clever enough to see when, in the idiom with which Mr. Crane was familiar, she had had the trust officer "on the carpet" and "called him down" on that memorable occasion of the day after. He might tell her, as he had recklessly done, that her own relation to the rich girl depended solely upon his consent, and hint coarsely that he knew well enough the ground of her extreme interest in Adelle's fate. Miss Comstock did not take the trouble to deny either fact. She merely smiled at the blustering banker, and intimated that the president and directors of the trust company might have views about the conduct of its trust officer towards their ward. She had heard much of the prominent social position of President West, and if she were not mistaken Mr. Nelson Glynn, the father of one of her girls, was a director in the bank. Mr. Crane wilted under this fine treatment, and departed as we have seen to do Miss Comstock's will.