"Father, dear father," she whispered to him, "don't mind. We'll win out." Her father submitted goodnaturedly but wearily to her embrace. He stretched his arms and yawned. "I'm dog tired," he said, rising. "I'm going to bed. You'll stay all night, Morehead?" "Not a bit of it," responded the Colonel. "You don't catch me deserting my own hard bed--not much! I'll go home." He shook hands with Mrs. Peter V. Wilkinson, and pressed a button. "How about you, Flomerfelt? It's rather late ..." said Peter V. "Don't care if I do," was the latter's answer. And on the servant's appearing, Peter V. ordered him to show Mr. Flomerfelt to one of the guest rooms, concluding with: "Show him to the one with the painted nymphs skylarking on the walls." Then he placed his arm around his daughter, and together they followed Colonel Morehead downstairs to the door, where they bade him good-night. Mrs. Wilkinson and Flomerfelt listened to the sound of retreating footsteps. "He'll not be coming back," she said, "and I want to talk to you." And pointing to the document that Leslie had been shown, she asked: "What does all this signify?" "What it signifies," he answered, picking up the paper, "may depend on you." The woman looked puzzled. "How?" Flomerfelt's eyes narrowed. Then, with a lithe and dexterous movement of his long arms, he shot his cuffs--hitherto out of sight--into view; extending them, with a jerk, below his coat-sleeves, so that they covered his lean wrists to the extent of three-quarters of an inch, a distance which he measured with mathematical certainty, apparently, for his nice adjustment of them was followed critically by his glance. He eyed and adjusted one cuff until it satisfied him, and then eyed and adjusted the other; finally he rubbed his hands together, and said: "One of the richest women in the world--rich in her own right. How does that sound to you?" Mrs. Peter V. stared at him. "Who is?" she inquired. "It's a possibility that affects a woman in this house." "Leslie?" He shook his head. "I was thinking of you." "I? I'm not rich. I've been a fool!" she cried. "I should have made him settle something on me--half, at any rate. Now it's all gone; he's lost everything; I might as well have had half of it--as well that, as to throw it in the gutter as he did." Wilkinson's confidential man seated himself. "Unquestionably you need me," he said frankly, and then stopped. Hitherto he had kept his own counsel. And yet, he reflected, there is a wisdom of disclosure just as there is a wisdom of suppression. Some new impulse seized him; his voice sank into a whisper. "There is a chance for us, Mrs. Peter V., to be rich, if we work together, unusually rich." "But how?" she whispered back, excitedly. Flomerfelt smiled inscrutably, and answered: "Out of the wreck, there's a chance----" "A good chance?" she interrupted eagerly. "There's only one man who can prevent it," he went on. "Peter V.----?" A nod was her answer.