"Delighted," says the young man. Then he breaks out hurriedly: "How the dickens does Miss Travenion, who is apparently a butterfly of New York fashion, have a father who, she says, was a contractor on the Union Pacific Railway? You, as her trustee, ought to know." "Yes--I know!" returns Southmead. Then after a second's pause of contemplation he continues: "And I'll tell you--it may save you getting a wild idea in your head, young man. Only don't look romantic, because the young lady we are discussing is half-way engaged to another, Mr. Oliver Ogden Livingston." "Half-way engaged," ejaculates Harry with a sigh. Then he says suddenly, a look of determination coming into his eyes: "Half-way is sometimes a long distance from the winning post," and lapses into silence, smoking his cigar in a nervous but savage manner, while the lawyer continues his conversation. "Miss Erma Travenion's history is rather a curious one. Her father is an old friend of mine. Her mother was an old friend of mine." This last with a slight sigh of recollection. "Both came of families who have from colonial times occupied leading positions in Manhattan society. Nearly twenty-five years ago, Ralph Harriman Travenion married Ella Travers Schuyler, one of the prettiest girls in the Manhattan set of New York society. Four years after, the young lady we are discussing came into the world. When she was about ten, her mother died, and her father concentrated his affection, apparently, on his only daughter. He was a man of very large fortune, a member of the leading clubs, on the governing committee of one or two of them, a man about town and a swell among swells.--But perhaps to forget his wife, whom I know he loved; during the sea of speculation that came with the Rebellion, he entered largely into dealing in stocks and gold, in an easy-going sybaritic kind of a way--and Wall Street made almost a wreck of what had once been a very fine fortune. This blow to his pocket was a blow to his pride. He could not endure to live in diminished style among the people who had known him as millionnaire, aristocrat, and _bon vivant_. Shortly after he sold his horses, yacht, villa in Newport, house in town, in short, his whole extensive establishment, and placing his daughter, who was about fourteen years of age at that time, at Miss Hines' Fashionable Academy, in Gramercy Park, he went West. "When he did so, I thought it was wholly from pride. Now I have become satisfied that it was in the hope of making another fortune, so that when she arrived at young ladyhood, Erma Travenion could assume the position in New York society to which she had been born." "What makes you think this?" asks Lawrence hurriedly. "Her father's actions since that time. You see, the Travenions and Livingstons had always been great friends, second cousins in fact, and it had been a kind of family matter and understanding that when Erma grew up, she should marry Mr. Oliver Ogden Livingston, who was then but a boy."