There was something in his voice she had never heard before, and now she knew that ever since one evening long ago she had been waiting to hear it. Her heart leaped, and a wave of glad color came into her face, but she answered very quietly,-- “Yes, I suppose it is.” For a little while he sat there looking at the fire, then he rose, and, standing beside her chair, let his hand rest lightly on her shoulder. “Good night, Dick,” he said simply. Next evening Robins and Bessel and Sponley came before John had fairly finished his dinner, and in the library the smoke was thicker and the talk choppier than ever before, and Dick, in her dark corner, listened more intently. The time for preparation was growing short; the decisive day was drawing very near. It could easily be seen now that the voting at the stockholders’ meeting would be close, horribly close, provided always that the trustees of John Bagsbury’s stock could not agree as to how it should be voted. Leaving that out of the question, the fortunes of the day hung upon a large block of stock, which, according to the secretary’s book, was the property of Jervis Curtin. How he meant to vote it, how he could be persuaded to vote it for John’s faction, was the question which the four allies were met to discuss this evening. “Can’t understand where he got money enough to buy a big chunk like that,” said Robins. “Queer thing,” Sponley answered. “Must have made some strike we don’t know about. Anyhow, it seems he’s got it, and the Lord only knows how he means to vote it. I’ve been talking to him till I’m tired, but I can’t make him commit himself.” “Know any reason--any personal reason--why he’s holding back?” asked Bessel. Sponley shook his head. “Never met him before this business came up,” he answered. Melville Sponley was playing badly. He was a strong believer in the efficacy of truth, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, and when forced to deviate from the truth he always tried to make the deviation as narrow as possible. But just this once, to adopt fencer’s parlance, he parried wide; he told more of a lie than was necessary, and by one of those hazards which are not astonishing only because they occur so frequently, by the veriest fluke in the world, Dick Haselridge knew he had lied. This is how it happened. A day or two before, Dick had gone to a song recital, and as the programme proved unexpectedly short, she found when she came out that the Bagsbury carriage had not yet come. While she was debating whether to wait for it or to try her fortunes in the elevated, Mrs. Jervis Curtin had offered to take her home. Dick had met her just once and had not liked her, but the rain was pouring, and it was so much easier to accept than to decline that she did the former. On the way home Mrs. Curtin asked Dick to come home with her first and have a cup of tea, and Dick, who had been thinking hard about something else, assented before she thought.