Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) THE GAME AND THE CANDLE By ELEANOR M. INGRAM WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY P. D. JOHNSON INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT 1909 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY OCTOBER PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS BROOKLYN, N. Y. TO THAT GRACIOUS FAMILY CIRCLE OF WHICH I HAVE THE HAPPINESS TO BE ONE [Illustration: He carried her back to the cream-tinted boudoir.] CONTENTS I THE DECISION II THE KEY TO THE DOOR III HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS IV THE BOND V THE NEW DAY VI "THE KING IS DEAD--LONG LIVE THE KING" VII ALLEGIANCE VIII TO MEET THE EMPEROR IX GUINEVERE OF THE SOUTH X A STANIEF'S OWN XI IN THE REGENT'S STUDY XII THE TURN IN THE ROAD XIII THE INTERVENTION OF ADRIAN XIV THE ORDEAL XV AT THE GATES OF CHANGE XVI FIRE LILIES XVII AN ARABIAN NIGHT XVIII THE LAST WEEK XIX ADRIAN'S DAY XX CLOSED THE GAME AND THE CANDLE CHAPTER I THE DECISION "It will last about six months," stated John Allard. "Afterward--" His brother looked up at him helplessly. "Afterward?" he echoed drearily. "Afterward there must be more. It is not possible, simply is _not_, for poverty to approach Theodora and Aunt Rose. Look around you, Robert." Under the clear California moonlight the jade-green lawns and terraces dropped one below the other to the distant road. Through them writhed the long serpentine drive and paths; dotted over them stood dark masses of flowering bushes or trees, with here and there the snowy gleam of a statue; over all floated the rhythmic tinkle of the central fountain. Untroubled calm was the spirit of the place, hereditary comfort. "I have looked so often, John. Yet, I find nothing." "We must find not a little money, but a fortune, and we must find it in six months," John answered, his low voice just reaching his listener. "There is no way to earn it, we know. Inside the law there are ways to acquire it. Wall Street, for instance; a new popular song or two, an inexplicable conjuring trick, or a fresh breakfast food. But we have no such talents, you and I; we are just the ordinary gentlemen of leisure,--dilettanti. We are useless, within the limits set for us. Outside the limits, outside the law--" The suggestion was left unfinished, the two men falling silent before it. They were young; so young that the morning mists of romance still blurred the sharp landscape of reality, and for the moment, daring appealed more than endurance. "We could not do anything low," Robert demurred hesitatingly. "Not about the mortgages or business tangles, John."