“I haven’t been in the theatrical world not to guess at this ‘Worried Father’ act, Mr. Ruggles. I told you I knew just what you were going to say.” “Wrong!” he repeated. “The business is old enough perhaps, lots of good jobs are old, but _this_ is a little different.” He took the turning picture and laid it on the table, and quietly possessed himself of the small cold hands. Blair’s solitaire shone up to him. Ruggles looked into Letty Lane’s eyes. “He is only twenty-two; it ain’t fair, it ain’t fair. He could count the times he has been on a lark, I guess. He hasn’t even been to an eastern college. He is no fool, but he’s darned simple.” She smiled faintly. The man’s face, near her own, was very simple indeed. “You have seen so much,” he urged, “so many fellows. You have been such a queen, I dare say you could get any man you wanted.” He repeated. “Most any one.” “I have never seen any one like Dan.” “Just so: He ain’t your kind. That is what I am trying to tell you.” She withdrew her hand from his violently. “There you are wrong. He _is_ my kind. He is what I like, and he is what I want to be like.” A wave of red dyed her face, and, in a tone more passionate than she had ever used to her lover, she said to Ruggles: “I love him—I love him!” Her words sent something like a sword through the older man’s heart. He said gently: “Don’t say it. He don’t know what love means yet.” He wanted to tell her that the girl Dan married should be the kind of woman his mother was, but Ruggles couldn’t bring himself to say the words. Now, as he sat near her, he was growing so complex that his brain was turning round. He heard her murmur: “I told you I knew your act, Mr. Ruggles. It isn’t any use.” This brought him back to his position and once more he leaned toward her and, in a different tone from the one he had intended to use, murmured: “You don’t know. You haven’t any idea. I do ask you to let Dan go, that’s a fact. I have got something else to propose in its place. It ain’t quite the same, but it is clear—marry me!” She gave a little exclamation. A slight smile rippled over her face like the sunset across a pale pool at dawn. “Laugh,” he said humbly; “don’t keep in. I know I am old-fashioned as the deuce, and me and Dan is quite a contrast, but I mean just what I say, my dear.” She controlled her amusement, if it was that. It almost made her cry with mirth, and she couldn’t help it. Between laughing breaths she said to him: “Oh, is it all for Dan’s sake, Mr. Ruggles? Is it?” And then, biting her lips and looking at him out of her wonderful eyes, she said: “I know it is—I know it is—I beg your pardon.” “I asked a girl once when I was poor—too poor. Now this is the second time in my life. I mean just what I say. I’ll make you a kind husband. I am fifty-five, hale as a nut. I dare say you have had many better offers.” “Oh, dear,” she breathed; “oh, dear, please—please stop!” “But I don’t expect you to marry me for anything but my money.”