“It seems to me,” pursued Reuben--“I’m speaking as an older lawyer than you, and an older man--it seems to me that to put a four hundred thousand dollar mortgage on the Minster property is a pretty big undertaking for a young man to go into on his own hook, without consulting anybody. Don’t misunderstand me. Don’t think I wish to meddle. Only it seems to me, if I had been in your place, I should have moved very cautiously and taken advice. “I did take advice,” said Horace. The discovery that Reuben knew of this mortgage filled him with uneasiness. “Of whom? Schuyler Tenney?” asked Reuben, speaking calmly enough, but watching with all his eyes. The chance shot went straight to the mark. Horace visibly flushed, and then turned pale. “I decline to be catechised in this way,” he said, nervously shifting his position on the chair, and then suddenly rising. “Gedney is a damned, meddlesome, drunken old fool,” he added, with irrelevant vehemence. “Yes, I’m afraid ‘Cal’ does drink too much,” answered Reuben, with perfect amiability of tone. He evinced no desire to continue the conversation, and Horace, after standing for an uncertain moment or two in the doorway, went out and put on his overcoat. Then he came back again. “Am I to take it that you object to my continuing to act as attorney for these ladies?” he asked from the threshold of the outer room, his voice shaking a little in spite of itself. “I don’t think I have said that,” replied Reuben. “No, you haven’t _said_ it,” commented the other. “To tell the truth, I haven’t quite cleared up in my own mind just what I do object to, or how much,” said Reuben, relighting his cigar, and contemplating his boots crossed on the desk-top. “We’ll talk of this again.” “As you like,” muttered young Mr. Boyce. Then he turned, and went away without saying good-night. The outer door slammed behind him. Twilight began to close in upon the winter’s day, but Reuben still sat in meditation. He had parted with his colleague in anger, and it was evident enough that the office family was to be broken up; but he gave scarcely a thought to these things. His mind, in fact, seemed by preference to dwell chiefly upon the large twisted silken cord which girdled the waist of that wonderful young woman, and the tasselled ends of which hung against the white front of her gown like the beads of a nun. Many variant thoughts about her affairs, about her future, rose in his mind and pleasantly excited it, but they all in turn merged vaguely into fancies circling around that glossy rope and weaving themselves into its strands.