Anyhow she was worth a fight. It was worth any man’s best to win the heart of such a woman and to make her his own. Could any man really do it? Of course he could! With the next breath he doubted it, and trembled at the happiness he felt bubbling in his soul when he felt the nearness of her exquisite figure. “Why so grave, Mr. Congressman?” she asked banteringly. “To tell you the truth, I’m scared,” he answered in low tones. “Of the great man in front?” she whispered. Vassar’s jaw closed with decision. “Far from it, I assure you!” “You’re not afraid of an automobile?” “One more guess--” “You couldn’t be afraid of little me?” she asked demurely. “Yesterday I would have said no with a very loud emphasis. I’m free to confess the more I’ve seen of you the more I dread your opposition--” She laughed in his face with a deliberate provoking challenge. “Now that’s unkind of you! I expected a much more gallant answer from a tall handsome apostle of romance and chivalry.” “Perhaps I was afraid you’d laugh at me--” “No. I hold that the age of true chivalry is only dawning--the age in which man will honor woman by recognizing her as worthy to be his pal and best friend as well as his toy.” There was something so genuine to the appeal of her personality that the man who intellectually disagreed with her philosophy yet found himself in foolish accord with every demand she made. Vassar was silent a moment, and glanced at her to see if she were chaffing or sparring to uncover his defenses. He was about to say too much--to confess too much and do it clumsily in the presence of the man he hated when the machine suddenly swung toward the cliff, swept up to a massive iron gate and stopped. The chauffeur sounded his horn and an old man dressed in the peasant costume of the lodge-keeper of a feudal estate of Central Europe emerged from the cottage built into the walls of the cliff and opened the gates without a word. He bowed humbly to the lord of the manor. Waldron nodded carelessly. The banker’s medieval castle, perched on the highest hill on upper Manhattan, was one of the sights of the metropolis. Vassar lifted his eyes and caught the majestic lines of the granite tower thrusting its grim embattlements into the skies. An ocean-going yacht lay at her anchor in the river like a huge swan with folded wings. The Italian boathouse which he had built at the water’s edge was connected with his castle by an underground passage bored through the granite cliff into a hall cut out of the stone a hundred feet beneath the foundations of the structure above. A swift elevator connected this hall with the house. The machine shot gracefully up the steep winding roadway and stopped beneath the vaulted porte-cochère. Liveried flunkies hurried down the stone landing to greet their master and his guests. There was nothing for them to do but open the door of the tonneau with obsequious bows.