"Do you mean to tell me that there is no engagement between you and Miss Brentwood?" "Just that." Ormsby put all the nonchalance he could muster into the laconic reply, but he was anticipating the sequent demand which came like a shot out of a gun. "And there never has been?" Ormsby grinned. "When you are digging a well and have found your stream of water, it's folly to go deeper, David. Can't you let 'good enough' alone?" Kent turned it over in his mind, frowning thoughtfully into his coffee-cup. When he spoke it was out of the mid-heart of manliness. "I wish you would tell me one thing, Ormsby. Am I responsible for--for the present state of affairs?" Ormsby stretched the truth a little; partly for Elinor's sake; more, perhaps, for Kent's. "You have done nothing that an honorable rival--and incidentally a good friend of mine--might not do. Therefore you are not responsible." "That is putting it very diplomatically," Kent mused. "I am afraid it does not exonerate me wholly." "Yes, it does. But it doesn't put me out of the running, you understand. I'm 'forninst' you yet; rather more stubbornly than before, I fancy." Kent nodded. "That, of course; I should think less of you if you were not. And you shall have as fair a show as you are giving me--which is saying a lot. Shall we go and smoke?" XXI A WOMAN INTERVENES It was still early in the evening when Kent mounted the steps of the Brentwood apartment house. Mother and daughters were all on the porch, but it was Mrs. Brentwood who welcomed him. "We were just wondering if you would imagine the message which Elinor was going to send, and didn't, and come out to see what was wanted," she said. "I am in need of a little legal advice. Will you give me a few minutes in the library?" Kent went with her obediently, but not without wondering why she had sent for him, of all the retainable lawyers in the capital. And the wonder became amazement when she opened her confidence. She had received two letters from a New York broker who offered to buy her railroad stock at a little more than the market price. To the second letter she had replied, asking a price ten points higher than the market. At this the broker had apparently dropped the attempted negotiation, since there had been no more letters. What would Mr. Kent advise her to do--write again? Kent smiled inwardly at the good lady's definition of "legal advice," but he rose promptly to the occasion. If he were in Mrs. Brentwood's place, he would not write again; nor would he pay any attention whatever to any similar proposals from any source. Had there been any others? Mrs. Brentwood confessed that there had been; that a firm of Boston brokers had also written her. Did Mr. Kent know the meaning of all this anxiety to buy in Western Pacific when the stock was going down day by day?