Sue Rainey did not mince matters, but plunged at once into an explanation of the purpose of her visit. From birth she had lived in an atmosphere of wealth. Although she was not counted a beautiful woman, she had, because of her wealth and the charm of her person, been much courted. Sam, who had talked briefly with her a half dozen times, had long had a haunting curiosity to know more of her personality. As she stood there before him looking so wonderfully well-kept and confident he thought her baffling and puzzling. “The colonel,” she began, and then hesitated and smiled. “You, Mr. McPherson, have become a figure in my father’s life. He depends upon you very much. He tells me that he has talked with you concerning a Miss Luella London from the theatre, and that you have agreed with him that the colonel and she should marry.” Sam watched her gravely. A flicker of mirth ran through him, but his face was grave and disinterested. “Yes?” he said, looking into her eyes. “Have you met Miss London?” “I have,” answered Sue Rainey. “Have you?” Sam shook his head. “She is impossible,” declared the colonel’s daughter, clutching the glove held in her hand and staring at the floor. A flush of anger rose in her cheeks. “She is a crude, hard, scheming woman. She colours her hair, she cries when you look at her, she hasn’t even the grace to be ashamed of what she is trying to do, and she has got the colonel into a fix.” Sam looked at the brown of Sue Rainey’s cheek and thought the texture of it beautiful. He wondered why he had heard her called a plain woman. The heightened colour brought to her face by her anger had, he thought, transfigured her. He liked her direct, forceful way of putting the matter of the colonel’s affair, and felt keenly the compliment implied by her having come to him. “She has self-respect,” he told himself, and felt a thrill of pride in her attitude as though it had been inspired by himself. “I have been hearing of you a great deal,” she continued, glancing up at him and smiling. “At our house you are brought to the table with the soup and taken away with the liqueur. My father interlards his table talk, and introduces all of his wise new axioms on economy and efficiency and growth, with a constant procession of ‘Sam says’ and ‘Sam thinks.’ And the men who come to the house talk of you also. Teddy Foreman says that at directors’ meetings they all sit about like children waiting for you to tell them what to do.” She threw out her hand with an impatient little gesture. “I am in a hole,” she said. “I might handle my father but I cannot handle that woman.” While she had been talking to him Sam looked past her and out at a window. When her eyes wandered from his face he looked again at her brown firm cheeks. From the beginning of the interview he had been intending to help her. “Give me the lady’s address,” he said; “I’ll go look her over.”