"If you think it is I'll tell you something that isn't: Avice practically refused him." Her husband pushed away his plate; the omission of even one regretful glance at its treasures betrayed the strong emotion under which he laboured. "This is serious," he said, quietly. "Let us get at it. Tell me if you please!" "She came to me and cried half the night. She refused him definitely at first, but he begged her to consider, to take a month to think it over--" Milbrey gasped. Shepler, who commanded markets to rise and they rose, or to fall and they fell--Shepler begging, entreating a child of his! Despite the soul-sickening tragedy of it, the situation was not without its element of sublimity. "She will consider; she _will_ reflect?" "You're guessing now, and you're as keen at that as I. Avice is not only amazingly self-willed, as you intimated a moment since, but she is intensely secretive. When she left me I could get nothing from her whatever. She was wretchedly sullen and taciturn." "But why _should_ she hesitate? Shepler--Rulon Shepler! My God! is the girl crazy? The very idea of hesitation is preposterous!" "I can't divine her. You know she has acted perversely in the past. I used to think she might have some affair of which we knew nothing--something silly and romantic. But if she had any such thing I'm sure it was ended, and she'd have jumped at this chance a year ago. You know yourself she was ready to marry young Bines, and was really disappointed when he didn't propose." "But this is too serious." He tinkled the little silver bell. "Find out if Miss Avice will be down to breakfast." "Yes, sir." "If she's not coming down I shall go up," declared Mr. Milbrey when the man had gone. "She's stubborn," cautioned his wife. "Gad! don't I know it?" Jarvis returned. "Miss Avice won't be down, sir, and I'm to fetch her up a pot of coffee, sir." "Take it at once, and tell her I shall be up to see her presently." Jarvis vanished. "I think I see a way to put pressure on her, that is if the morning hasn't already brought her back to her senses." At four o'clock that afternoon, Avice Milbrey's ring brought Mrs. Van Geist's butler to the door. "Sandon, is Aunt Cornelia at home?" "Yes, Miss Milbrey, she's confined to her room h'account h'of a cold, miss." "Thank heaven!" "Yes, miss--certainly! will you go h'up to her?" "And Mutterchen, dear, it was a regular bombshell," she concluded after she had fluttered some of the November freshness into Mrs. Van Geist's room, and breathlessly related the facts. "You demented creature! I should say it must have been." "Now, don't lecture!" "But Shepler is one of the richest men in New York." "Dad already suspects as much." "And he's kind, he's a big-hearted chap, a man of the world, generous--a--" "'A woman fancier,' Fidelia Oldaker calls him." "My dear, if he fancies you--"