And that night she had walked through the doorway treating him exactly as if he had been a piece of furniture which had annoyingly got itself out of place. Lambert's eyes were quizzical. Old Planter wasn't at all the bear, cracking cumbersome jokes about the young ferret that had stolen a march on the sly old foxes of Wall Street. So that was what his threats amounted to! Or was it because there was nothing whatever of the former George Morton left? He examined curiously the bowed white head and the dim eyes in which some fire lingered. He could still approximate the emotions aroused by that interview in the library. He felt the old instinct to give this man every concession to a vast superiority. In a sense, he was still afraid of him. He had to get over that, for hadn't he come here to accomplish just that against which Old Planter had warned him? "Where," Lambert asked, "is the blushing Josiah?" George caught the irony of his voice, but his mother explained in her unemotional way that Sylvia and Blodgett were riding. Certainly all along those early days had been in Lambert's mind, for he led George to the scene of their fight. He faced him there, and he laughed. "You remember?" "Why not?" George said. "I was born that day." "Morton! Morton!" Lambert mused. George swung and caught Lambert's shoulders quickly. There was more than sentiment in his quick, reminiscent outburst. It seemed even to himself to carry another threat. "You call me Mr. Morton, or just George, as if I were about as good as you." Lambert laughed. "We've had some fair battles since then, haven't we, George? You've done a lot you said you would that day." "I've scarcely started," George answered. "I'm a dismal failure. Perhaps I'll brace up." "You're hard to satisfy," Lambert said. George dug at the ground with his heel. "All the greater necessity to find ultimate satisfaction," he grumbled. Lambert glanced at him inquiringly. "I suppose," George continued, "I ought to thank you and your sister for not reminding your parents what I was some years ago, for not blurting it out to a lot of other people." "You've shown me," Lambert said, "it would have been vicious to have put any stumbling blocks in your way. Driggs is right. He usually is. You're a very great man." But George shook his head, and accompanied Lambert back to the house with the despondency of failure. Sylvia and Blodgett were back, lounging with Mr. and Mrs. Planter about a tea table which servants had carried to a sunny spot on the lawn. At sight of George Sylvia's colour heightened. Momentarily she hesitated to take his offered hand, then bowed to the presence of the others. "You didn't tell me, Lambert, you were bringing any one." Blodgett's welcome was cordial enough to strike a balance. "Never see anything of you these days, George. He makes money, Mrs. Planter, too fast to bother with an old plodder like me. Thank the Lord I've still got cash in his firm."