She admitted George, whose face was dark with heat, and whose voice rasped. "Where's Lizzie?" he asked, eying Mary's negligee. "Oh, dearie--and I've been keeping you waiting!" Mary lamented. "Come into the dining-room, it's cooler. She's marketing." George dropped into a chair and mopped his forehead. "No one to answer the telephone?" he pursued, frowning. "It's disconnected, dear. Georgie, what is it?--you look sick." "Well, I am, just about!" George said sternly. Then, irrelevantly, he demanded: "Mary, did you know your mother had disposed of her Sunbright shares?" "Sold her copper stock!" Mary ejaculated, aghast For Mamma's entire income was drawn from this eminently safe and sane investment, and Mary and George had never ceased to congratulate themselves upon her good fortune in getting it at all. "Two months ago," said George, with a shrewdly observant eye. Mary interpreted his expression. "Certainly I didn't know it!" she said with spirit. "Didn't, eh? She SAYS you did," George said. "Mamma does?" Mary was astounded. "Read that!" Her husband flung a letter on the table. Mary caught it up, ran through it hastily. It was from Mamma: She was ending her visit at Rock Bar, the Archibalds were going South rather early, they had begged her to go, but she didn't want to, and Mary could look for her any day now. And she was writing to Georgie because she was afraid she'd have to tell him that she had done an awfully silly thing: she had sold her Sunbright shares to an awfully attractive young fellow whom Mr. Pierce had sent to her--and so on and so on. Mary's eye leaped several lines to her own name. "Mary agreed with me that the Potter electric light stock was just as safe and they offered seven per cent," wrote Mamma. "I DO remember now her saying something about the Potter," Mary said, raising honest, distressed eyes from the letter, "but with no possible idea that she meditated anything like this!" George had been walking up and down the room. "She's lost every cent!" he said savagely. And he flung both hands out with an air of frenzy before beginning his angry march again. Mary sat in stony despair. "Have you heard from her today?" he flung out. His wife shook her head. "Well, she's in town," George presently resumed, "because Bates told me she telephoned the office while I was out this morning. Now, listen, Mary. I've done all I'm going to do for your mother! And she's not to enter this house again--do you understand?" "George!" said Mary.