"Tell me," she said, "what is it you do to people? There is Mrs. Metuchen, who pretends to abominate young men, and openly admires you. To-day you captured my father; by to-morrow you will be friends with Guy." "With Guy?" Mechanically Roland repeated the phrase. Then at once into the very core of memory entered the lancinating pang of a nerve exposed. During the second that followed, in that tumult of visions that visits him who awakes from a swoon, there came to him the effort made in Tuxedo to recall in what manner the name of Dunellen was familiar to his ears; but that instantly departed, and in its stead came a face one blur of tears, and behind it a stripling livid with hate. Could that be Guy? If it were, then indeed would the high-road narrow into an alley, with a dead wall at the end. Yet of the inward distress he gave no outward sign. About his thin lips a smile still played, and as he repeated the phrase he looked, as he always did, confident and self-possessed. "Yes, I am sure you will like each other," the girl answered; "all the more so perhaps because no two people could be less alike. Guy, you see, is--" But whatever description she may have intended to give remained unexpressed. A portiere had been drawn, and some one was entering the room. Roland, whose back was toward the door, turned obliquely and looked. "Why, there he is!" he heard Justine exclaim; and in the man that stood there he saw the stripling he had just evoked. Into the palms of his hands a moisture came, yet as Justine proceeded with some form of introduction he rose to his feet. "So you are the cousin," he mused; and then, with a bow in which he put the completest indifference, he resumed his seat. "We were just talking of you," Justine continued. "Why didn't you come in last night?" "It is snowing," the cousin remarked, inconsequently, and sat himself down. "Dr. Thorold, you know;" and Justine, turning to Mistrial, began to relate one of those little anecdotes which are serviceable when conversation drags. As she ran on, Roland, apparently attentive, marked that one of Thorold's feet was moving uneasily, and divined rather than saw that the fingers of his hand were clinched. "He is working himself up," he reflected. "Well, let him; it will make it the easier for me." And as he told himself this he turned on Thorold a glance which he was prepared to instantly divert. But the physician was not looking; he sat bolt-upright, his eyes lowered, and about his mouth and forehead the creases of a scowl.