Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK--BOSTON--CHICAGO DALLAS--ATLANTA--SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON--BOMBAY--CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL BY MAY SINCLAIR AUTHOR OF "THE DIVINE FIRE," ETC. New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1914 Copyright, 1914 By MAY SINCLAIR Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1914. CONTENTS PAGE THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL 1 THE GIFT 25 THE FAULT 59 WILKINSON'S WIFE 81 MISS TARRANT'S TEMPERAMENT 97 APPEARANCES 153 THE WRACKHAM MEMOIRS 177 THE COSMOPOLITAN 221 THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL I "Stephen K. Lepper, Pork-Packing Prince, from Chicago, U. S. A., by White Star Line, for Liverpool." Such was the announcement with which the _Chicago Central Advertiser_ made beautiful its list of arrivals and departures. It was not exactly a definition of him. To be sure, if you had caught sight of him anywhere down the sumptuous vista of the first-class sleeping-saloon of the New York and Chicago Express, you would have judged it adequate and inquired no more. You might even have put him down for a Yankee. But if, following him on this side of the Atlantic, you had found yourself boxed up with him in a third-class compartment on the London and North-western Railway, your curiosity would have been aroused. The first thing you would have noticed was that everything about him, from his gray traveling hat to the gold monogram on his portmanteau, was brilliantly and conspicuously new. Accompanied by a lady, it would have suggested matrimony and the grand tour. But there was nothing else to distract you from him. He let himself be looked at; he sat there in his corner seat, superbly, opulently still. And somehow it dawned on you that, in spite of some Americanisms he let fall, he was not, and never could have been, a Yankee. He had evidently forged ahead at a tremendous speed, but it was weight, not steam, that did it. He belonged to the race that bundles out on the uphill grade and puts its shoulders to the wheel, and on the down grade tucks its feet in, sits tight, and lets the thing fly, trusting twenty stone to multiply the velocity.