“I’ve told him a hundred times, he’s got no more notion of reading characters than a mulley cow. Anybody can go up to him and wheedle his coat off his back, if he knows the first rudiments of the confidence game. It seems, in this special instance, that he took a fancy to Boyce because he saw him give two turkeys to old Ben Lawton, who’d lost his money at a turkey-shoot and got no birds. He thought it was generous and noble and all that. So far as I can make out, that was his only reason.” Dr. Lester stopped short and looked at his companion. Then he burst out in a loud, shrill laugh, which renewed itself in intermittent gurgles of merriment so many times that Fairchild finally found them monotonous, and interposed a question: “There’s something besides fun in all this, Lester. What is it?” “It isn’t professional to tell, my dear fellow, but there _is_ something--you’re right--and we are Reuben’s friends against all the world; and this is what I laughed at.” Then in a low tone, as if even the white flaring moon and the jewelled stars in the cold sky had ears, he told his secret to his friend--a secret involving one small human being of whose very existence Mr. Horace Boyce had no knowledge. “The girl has come back here to Thessaly, you know,” concluded the doctor. Fairchild nodded assent. Then after a moment’s thought he said: “It’s too bad we changed the name of the organization. That cuss _ought_ to be the president of a Reform Club!” CHAPTER XIII.-- THE DAUGHTER OF THE MILLIONS. A YOUNG woman who is in her twenty-third year, who is possessed of bright wits, perfect health, great personal beauty, and a fortune of nearly a million of dollars in her own right, and who moreover is untroubled by a disquieting preference for any single individual in the whole army of males, ought not, by all the rules, to be unhappy. Kate Minster defied the rules, and moped. Not infrequently she found herself in the mood to think, “Now I realize how rich girls must feel when they commit themselves to entering a convent.” Oftener still, perhaps, she caught her tongue framing impatient or even petulant answers to her mother, to her mother’s friends, to everybody, in truth, save her sister Ethel. The conviction that she was bad-tempered had begun to enter her mind as it were without rapping, and with the air of a familiar. By dint of repeated searchings in the mirror, she had almost discovered a shadow between her brows which would presently develop into a wrinkle, and notify to the whole world her innate vixenish tendencies. And indeed, with all this brooding which grew upon her, it was something of a triumph for youth that the wrinkle had still failed to come. It is said that even queens yawn sometimes, when nobody is looking. But at least they have work to do, such as it is, and grow tired. Miss Kate had no work of any sort, and was utterly wearied. The vacuity of existence oppressed her with formless fatigue, like a nightmare.