He blamed Grove for this,--and his father for letting Grove make it so. Grove was the disturbing element. He was turning everything inside out. Rod didn't like the people Grove surrounded himself with. He resented Hawk's Nest being subject at Grove's pleasure to an invasion by free-drinking, slang-slinging people, whose pursuit was not so much pleasure as excitement. He grew drowsy in the midst of such reflections. After all, it didn't matter much. Especially to him. Probably this crowd was not much different from the general run of people who had money to spend and time to burn. He supposed that he was hypersensitive, too damned particular, finicky,--too infernally quick on the hair trigger of an impression. And so he fell asleep. CHAPTER VII Grove's guests danced, drank, sang, tennised, gossiped and played cards during their waking intervals for forty-eight hours. Then the white yacht fled down the sea lanes to bring her owner to his mahogany desk on Monday morning rejuvenated by a quiet week-end at his country house, as the social page of the Vancouver _Province_ duly chronicled. Perhaps the item was correct enough in one particular. Possibly Mr. Grove Norquay was rejuvenated, or refreshed. Quietness would not so have restored his force. Next to display, Grove liked action. Whatever else he might lack, he was endowed with abundant energy. He was a big man, like most of the Norquays, handsome, with an engaging manner. It was scarcely correct for Phil to say that Grove never fooled men. If he did not fool them he had a faculty of influencing them favorably to himself. That faculty had made men like Arthur Richston and John P. Wall willing to let him stir the financial pot in which their money bubbled as well as his own. A young man in search of a career would not have commended himself to them simply by reason of his search. Even with the Norquay prestige behind him he would still need that indescribable quality which is called magnetism for lack of a more definite term,--that personal power of suasion which successful motor-car salesmen and old-world diplomats alike exercise to secure signatures on the dotted line. Good men have that persuasiveness, that ability to compel confidence, and bad ones also. To which category Grove Norquay belonged it would be difficult to say. There is the blind power of circumstance to consider.