Later, Clifford went to Columbia and was quietly popular with the quieter fellows. It would seem that had any little devils not been strained out of his blood by his long line of Huguenot ancestry, they had followed the fate of the fine-cut, for no one who knew Clifford van der Veere was ever anxious about the probity of his conduct. He did not take to the importing business, while his cousins early showed a natural capacity for the work of the big firm in all its branches. Clifford's parents, too, seemed to feel that it was time that there be a professional member of their honorable family. Moreover the property was large, and the younger sisters would require a guardian, and the estate an administrator. So Clifford finished the law-course. Nor was it many years until the family fortune of approximately one million dollars in real estate, securities and mortgages was left him to administer for himself and the two sisters. Thus before thirty the responsibility of these many thousands swept down upon him. Limited in practical contact with the world, geographically, politically, socially, having learned little of the play-side of life, he was by inheritance, training and inclination a conservative. He had never practiced law. He never tried a case, but he now opened a downtown office where he punctually arrived at ten o'clock and methodically spent the morning, carefully, personally managing all the details of the entailed estate. He was essentially conscientious and, as the years passed, there was no lessening of interest in his devotion to each transaction, large or small. There were no losses, though his conservatism turned him away from many golden opportunities which knocked at the door of his wealth, the acceptance of which would have doubled the estate in any ten-year period of these days of New York's magnificent expansion. He was nearly forty when he married a quiet, good woman who added little that was new, who most conscientiously subtracted nothing of the old, from his now systematic life. They both realized that their Fifth Avenue home was rapidly growing out of date, so for nearly five years they spent their spare hours daily, in the, to Clifford, vital and seemingly unending details of modernizing the old house. It was during those days when the plans so carefully considered were being realized in granite and marble and polished woods, that Mrs. van der Veere felt the first distressing touch of anxiety. Her husband seemed unduly particular. At times he would be painfully uncertain about minute and minor details of construction and on a few occasions unprecedentedly failed to get to the office at all, delayed by protracted discussions of the advisability of certain changes, long since decided upon, discussions which shook the confidence of architect and contractor in both his sagacity and judgment. Fortunately Mrs. van der Veere proved a wholesome counselor and her opinions often settled details her husband, alone, apparently