"Listen, Charley. Ben Gartz is coming to dinner to-night." Charley's eyebrows went up ever so slightly. She said nothing. "Charley, Ben Gartz could do a great deal for your father--and for all of us--if he wanted to." "Doesn't he want to?" "Well, after all, why should he? It isn't as if we were related--or as if he were one of the family." "Lottie, you mean?" She knew what her mother meant. And yet she wanted to give her a chance--a chance to save herself from this final infamy. "N-n-no." Her voice had the rising inflection. "I don't think he cares about Lottie any more." "Then that snatches him definitely out of the family clutches, doesn't it? Unless Aunt Charlotte----" "Don't be funny, Charley. He's a man to be respected. He's good-looking, not old; more than well-to-do--rich, really." Charley's eyes were cold and hard. And they were no longer mother and daughter, but two women, battle-locked. "M-m-m.... A little old and fat though, don't you think, for most purposes? And just a wee bit common? H'm?" "Common! Well, when it comes to being common, my dear child, I don't think there was anything fastidious about the choice you made last June. After all, Delicatessen Dick isn't exactly----" "Just a minute, mother. I want to get this thing straight. I'm to marry your chubby little friend in order to save the family fortunes--is that it?" "N-no. I don't mean just that. I merely----" "What do you mean, then? I want to hear you say it." "You could do a really big thing for your father. You must have seen how old he's grown in the last six months. I don't see how you can stand by and not want to help. He had a chance. Ben Gartz practically offered to take him into the business. But you were deliberately rude to him. No man with any pride----" Charley began to laugh then; not prettily. "Oh, mother, you quaint old thing!" Belle stiffened. "I don't want to insult you, don't you know, but I can't make a thing out of what you've said except that if I marry this chubby little ridiculous old sport he'll take Dad into the business and we'll all live happily ever after and I'll be just like the noble heroine who sells herself to the rich old banker to pay the muggidge. Oh mother!" She was laughing again; and then, suddenly, she was crying, her face distorted. She was crying terribly. "Sh-sh-sh! Your father'll hear you! There's nothing to make a scene about." "No scene!" said Charley, through her tears. "If you can't cry when your mother dies when can you cry!" She turned away from her then. Belle Kemp looked a little frightened. But at the door she said what she still had to say. "He's coming here to dinner to-night."