"It wasn't just what she said," mused Gladwin, "though that was bad enough, but it was the way she said it. These were her exact words, 'Go on, yer fresh slob, an' sneak yer biscuits!' How does that suit you for exploding a romance?" "Blown to powder and bits," murmured Whitney Barnes, sombrely. "Sorry you told me this--never mind why--but there's one thing I've been wanting to ask you for a long time: How about that girl you rescued from drowning four years ago? I remember it made you quite famous at the time. According to all standards of romance, you should have married her." Travers Gladwin looked up with a wry smile. "Did you ever see the lady?" he asked sharply. "No. Wasn't she pretty?" "She was a brunette." "You don't fancy brunettes?" "She was a dark brunette." "Dark?" "Yes, from Africa." "That was tough luck!" exclaimed Barnes without cracking a smile. CHAPTER X. THE HEARTBEATS OF MR. HOGG. In a magnificently furnished apartment on Madison avenue, which Mrs. Elvira Burton had rented for New York's winter season, that augustly beautiful or beautifully august lady sat writing. I may say that she was writing grimly and that there was Jovian determination stamped upon her high, broad forehead and indented at the corners of her tense lips. She had just returned from a consultation with two matrons of the same stern fibre as herself. No group of gray-bearded physicians had ever weighed the fate of a patient with more attention to pathological detail than had Mrs. Burton and her two friends weighed the fate of Helen Burton, but whereas it rarely happens that pork is prescribed in a delicate case, the result of that petticoated conclave was that Hogg was prescribed for the flower-like ward of the leader of Omaha's socially elect. While Mrs. Burton had done most of the talking, her two friends who had broken into New York's next-to-the-top layer of society by means of the hyphens with which they coupled the names of their first and second husbands; her two friends, I say, had managed to wedge in a word or two--all in favor of Jabez Hogg. The guardian of the two prettiest girls who had ever debutanted in the Nebraska metropolis emerged from that conference on fire with resolve. She would marry Helen to Mr. Hogg, thus link together the Hogg and Burton millions and thereby create an alliance that would take its place beside any in the country in the matter of bank account. So confident was she of the power of her will that she did not even remove her wraps before she sat down to answer Jabez Hogg's letter. Nor did she bother to ask her maid if Helen and Sadie had returned from their ride. She did not care to discuss the matter with them. She had decided. It remained only for weaker wills to yield. Beginning with a regal flourish of the pen, she wrote: