A Sunday drive in the Park, and late excursions among the kaleidoscopic crowds of midnight New York filled up his time until he should again meet Irma Gluyas. He had always turned away in disgust from the painted faces of the leering sirens of the Tenderloin, and now he sat gloomily eying the vacuous stare of the rabbit-faced stage beauties capering in their mock diamonds. For a higher womanly ideal reigned in his lonely bosom. Back, back to the speaking silence of his lonely rooms he wandered, to gaze through the smoke wreaths upon that picture which had so strangely brought Irma Gluyas into his life. Gloomily recalling the past, he went over all the brief memories of his boyhood, and tried to recall his stern father's few confidences, or picture to himself the mother whom he had never known. All was a gray blank of toiling days and carking cares. And Worthington had robbed him and made him eat the bread of dependence. He lived now only to wreak a vengeance upon the man who had shared his father's early speculations and deserted him in his time of need. The ruin of Everett Clayton was now explained. And but one gracious memory lingered with him to lighten the gloom of his dependent boyhood. Golden-haired Alice Worthington, the child-angel of the house, the frank girlish little playmate, the slim, shy school girl, the "Little Sister" of his striving college days. And now she was doomed to be the deluded prey of a vulgar money conspiracy--sold, body and soul. He groaned as he thought of the deliberate sacrifice of the girl's glorious young womanhood to the vicious ambitions of her father's mad race for wealth and power. "Shall I warn her?" he bitterly mused. And then all his manhood rose up against discovering a father's shame. "Never!" he cried. "I have eaten his bread and salt. My quarrel is with him alone! Ferris is to be the coming bridegroom. He is like all the rest--greedy of money and power. He will surely make her a "good husband" of the plutocratic code. Her money, his uncle's influence, bartered off for each other, will tie them firmly together. She shall never know from me. But I will fight Hugh Worthington a silent battle to the death. It will be a life and death struggle under the Black Flag." It was this oath which made Clayton resolve to now hide his own private life slyly from all his colleagues. And it was a most needful precaution. For one single imprudence would give to his enemies the secret of his devotion to the dark-eyed woman whose eyes seemed to shine through all the clouds around him. And, strange to say, the watchful Einstein had as yet made no report, though each night during the week Clayton had seen the youth hovering afar, at varied times, and in strangely incongruous changes of external adornment. It was while Clayton was hastily packing up his bank deposits, upon the Monday morning, which had at last arrived, young Einstein glided into the room and drew Clayton to the door, left slightly ajar.