“My intelligent colleagues, of course, will look for the lady. Where there is a strong demand the supply automatically offers itself for consumption. And what will the seven hundred and fifty alert young men, with great capacities for fictional art, who are temporarily assisting actress-ladies and self-paying authoresses and unprinted poetesses and fertilizer-manufacturers unmarried daughters, do? What will those estimable young artists, miscalled press agents, do when they encounter the demand for Tom's fiancée's photograph? What except 'Here she is!'--six thousand words, thirty-two poses, and a facsimile of a love-letter or two, to prove it! And then--chorus-ladies, poetesses, fair divorcées about to honor the vaudeville--” The reporter stopped--he had seen the look on E. H. Merri-wether's face. He felt sorry. “But it is true,” he said, defensively. “Yes!” Tom's poor rich father felt cold all over. The reporter pursued, more quietly: “You know the ingenuity of my colleagues, the great American respect for a millionaire's privacy, and the national sense of humor. Will your son's love-affair be discussed? Will it be discussed with the gentlemanly reticence and innate delicacy of feeling of _my_ story?” Mr. E. H. Merriwether never before realized that the law against homicide was even more absurd than an Interstate Commerce Commission order; but he had to bow to the inevitable. He was beginning to understand how Napoleon felt on the deck of the _Bellerophon_ when on the way to St. Helena., Do you remember the picture? He nodded--not dejectedly, but also not far from it. “Well, in a day or two or three, according to conditions; we come out with it. We print the lady's name and her portrait--possibly not the best of all her photographs, but the only one I could--” “Who is she?” burst from the lips of the reporter's victim. Instantly the reporter's face became very serious. “I feared so, Mr. Merriwether,” he said, very quietly. “Look here, my boy!” interrupted Mr. Merriwether, with an earnestness that had in it a threat. “I don't know what your game is and I don't care. I'll admit right now that you are a very clever young man and probably not a crook; but I tell you calmly, quietly, without any threats, that you are not going to publish any damned-fool article about my family in any paper in New York.” The reporter rose and looked straight into the unblinking eyes of the great financier. Then he said, slowly, and, the old fellow admitted, distinctly impressively: