It was she who cut short his thoughts. She looked at the clock. “I can’t think where Clement is,” she said. “You don’t think that there is anything wrong, dad?” “Wrong? No,” he answered. “Why should there be!” “But he disappeared so strangely. He said nothing about missing his dinner.” “He was to check some figures with Rodd this evening. He may have gone to his rooms.” “But—without his dinner?” But the banker was not in the mood to trouble himself about trifles. The lamp shone clear and mellow, the fire crackled pleasantly, a warm comfort wrapped him round, the port had a flavor that he had not perceived in it of late. Instead of replying to Betty’s question he measured the decanter with his eye, decided that it was a special occasion, and filled himself another glass. “Ovington’s Bank,” he said as he raised it to his lips. But that to which he really drank was the home that he saw about him, saved from rain, made secure. Betty smiled. “You’re relieved to-night, dad.” “Well, I am, Betty,” he admitted. “Yes, I am—and thankful.” “And that queer old man! I wonder,” as she turned her knitting on her knee, “why he did it.” “I suppose for Arthur’s sake. He’d have lost pretty heavily—for him.” “But you didn’t expect that Mr. Griffin would come forward?” The banker allowed it. “No,” he said. “I don’t know that I ever expected anything less. Such things don’t happen, my girl, very often. But he will be no loser, and I suppose Arthur convinced him of that. He is shrewd, and, once convinced, he would see that it was the only thing to do.” “But not many people would have been convinced?” “No, perhaps not.” Betty knitted awhile. “I thought that he hated the bank?” she said, as she paused to rub her chin with a needle. “He does—and me. But he loves his money, my dear.” “Still it isn’t his. It is Arthur’s.” “True. But he’s a man who cannot bear to see money lost. He thinks a good deal of it.” “He is not alone in that,” Betty exclaimed. “Sometimes I feel that I hate money! People grow so fond of it. They think only of themselves, even when you’ve been ever so good to them.” “Well, it’s human nature,” the banker replied equably. “I don’t know who it is that you have in your mind, my dear, but it applies to most people.” He was going to say more when the door opened. “Mr. Rodd is here, asking for Mr. Clement, sir,” the maid said. “He was to meet him at half after six, and——” “Ask Mr. Rodd to come in.” The cashier entered shyly. In his dark suit, with his black stock and stiff carriage, he made no figure, where Arthur, or even Clement, would have shone. But there were women in Aldersbury who said that he had fine eyes, eyes with something of a dog’s gentleness in them; and Arthur so far agreed that he dubbed him a dull, mechanical dog, and often made fun of him as such. But perhaps Arthur did not always see to the bottom of things.