It might have been anger that brought the rush of color to her face. She turned and looked him full in the face.

"If I do, it is not you."

The arrow went home. His eyes snapped with anger.

"You took such lofty ground just now that I should hardly have supposed the attentions of Mr. Wentworth meant anything so serious. I thought that was mere friendship."

This time there was no doubt that the color meant anger.

"What do you mean?" she demanded, looking him once more full in the eyes.

"I refer to what the world says, especially as he himself is such a model of all the Christian virtues."

"What the world says? What do you mean?" she persisted, never taking her eyes from his face.

He simply shrugged his shoulders.

"So I a.s.sume Mr. Keith is the fortunate suitor for the remnant of your affections: Keith the immaculate--Keith the pure and pious gentleman who trades on his affections. I wish you good luck."

At his insolence Mrs. Lancaster's patience suddenly snapped.

"Go," she said, pointing to the door. "Go."

When Wickersham walked out into the street, his face was white and drawn, and a strange light was in his eyes. He had played one of his last cards, and had played it like a fool. Luck had gone against him, and he had lost his head. His heart--that heart that had never known remorse and rarely dismay--began to sink. Luck had been going against him now for a long time, so long that it had swept away his fortune and most of his credit. What was worse to him, he was conscious that he had lost his nerve. Where should he turn? Unless luck turned or he could get help he would go down. He canva.s.sed the various means of escape. Man after man had fallen away from him. Every scheme had failed.

He attributed it all to Norman--to Norman and Keith. Norman had ruined him in New York; Keith had blocked him and balked him in the South. But one resource remained to him. He would make one more supreme effort.

Then, if he failed? He thought of a locked drawer in his desk, and a black pistol under the papers there. His cheek blanched at the thought, but his lips closed tight. He would not survive disgrace. His disgrace meant the known loss of his fortune. One thing he would do. Keith had escaped him, had succeeded, but Norman he could overthrow. Norman had been struck hard; he would now complete his ruin. With this mental tonic he straightened up and walked rapidly down the street.

That evening Wickersham was closeted for some time with a man who had of late come into especial notice as a strong and merciless financier--Mr. Kestrel.

Mr. Kestrel received him at first with a coldness which might have repelled a less determined man. He had no delusions about Wickersham; but Wickersham knew this, and unfolded to him, with plausible frankness, a scheme which had much reason in it. He had at the same time played on the older man's foibles with great astuteness, and had awakened one or two of his dormant animosities. He knew that Mr. Kestrel had had a strong feeling against Norman for several years.

"You are one of the few men who do not have to fall down and worship the name of Wentworth," he said.

"Well, I rather think not," said Mr. Kestrel, with a glint in his eyes, as he recalled Norman Wentworth's scorn of him at the board-meeting years before, when Norman had defended Keith against him.

"--Or this new man, Keith, who is undertaking to teach New York finance?"

Mr. Kestrel gave a hard little laugh, which was more like a cough than an expression of mirth, but which meant that he was amused.

"Well, neither do I," said Wickersham. "To tell you frankly, I hate them both, though there is money, and big money, in this, as you can see for yourself from what I have said. This is my real reason for wanting you in it. If you jump in and hammer down those things, you will clean them out. I have the old patents to all the lands that Keith sold those people. They antedate the t.i.tles under which Rawson claims. If you can break up the deal now, we will go in and recover the lands from Rawson.

Wentworth is so deep in that he'll never pull through, and his friend Keith has staked everything on this one toss."

Old Kestrel's parchment face was inscrutable as he gazed at Wickersham and declared that he did not know about that. He did not believe in having animosities in business matters, as it marred one's judgment.

But Wickersham knew enough to be sure that the seed he had planted would bear fruit, and that Kestrel would stake something on the chance.

In this he was not deceived. The next day Mr. Kestrel acceded to his plan.

For some days after that there appeared in a certain paper a series of attacks on various lines of property holdings, that was characterized by other papers as a "strong bearish movement." The same paper contained a vicious article about the attempt to unload worthless coal-lands on gullible Englishmen. Meantime Wickersham, foreseeing failure, acted independently.

The attack might not have amounted to a great deal but for one of those untimely accidents that sometimes overthrow all calculations. One of the keenest and oldest financiers in the city suddenly dropped dead, and a stampede started on the Stock Exchange. It was stayed in a little while, but meantime a number of men had been hard hit, and among these was Norman Wentworth. The papers next day announced the names of those who had suffered, and much s.p.a.ce was given in one of them to the decline of the old firm of Wentworth & Son, whose history was almost contemporary with that of New York.

By noon it was extensively rumored that Wentworth & Son would close their doors. The firm which had lasted for three generations, and whose name had been the synonym for honor and for philanthropy, which had stood as the type of the highest that can exist in commerce, would go down. Men spoke of it with a regret which did them honor--hard men who rarely expressed regret for the losses of another.

It was rumored, too, that Wickersham & Company must a.s.sign; but this caused little surprise and less regret. Aaron Wickersham had had friends, but his son had not succeeded to them.

Keith, having determined to talk to Alice Lancaster about Lois, was calling on the former a day or two after her interview with Wickersham.

She was still somewhat disturbed over it, and showed it in her manner so clearly that Keith asked what was the trouble.

It was nothing very much, she said. Only she had broken finally with a friend she had known a long time, and such things upset her.

Keith was sympathetic, and suddenly, to his surprise, she broke down and began to cry. He had never seen her weep before since she sat, as a girl, in the pine-woods and he lent her his handkerchief to dry her tears. Something in the a.s.sociation gave him a feeling of unwonted tenderness. She had not appeared to him so soft, so feminine, in a long time. He essayed to comfort her. He, too, had broken with an old friend, the friend of a lifetime, and he would never get over it.

"Mine was such a blow to me," she said, wiping her eyes; "such cruel things were said to me. I did not think any one but a woman would have said such biting things to a woman."

"It was Ferdy Wickersham, I know," said Keith, his eyes contracting; "but what on earth could he have said? What could he have dared to say to wound you so?"

"He said all the town was talking about me and Norman." She began to cry again. "Norman, dear old Norman, who has been more like a brother to me than any one I have ever known, and whom I would give the world to bring back happiness to."

"He is a scoundrel!" exclaimed Keith. "I have stood all--more than I ever expected to stand from any man living; but if he is attacking women"--he was speaking to himself rather than to her--"I will unmask him. He is not worth your notice," he said kindly, addressing her again.

"Women have been his prey ever since I knew him, when he was but a young boy." Mrs. Lancaster dried her eyes.

"You refer to the story that he had married that poor girl and abandoned her?"

"Yes--partly that. That is the worst thing I know of him."

"But that is not true. However cruel he is, that accusation is unfounded. I know that myself."

"How do you know it?" asked Keith, in surprise.

"He told me the whole story: explained the thing to my satisfaction. It was a poor crazy girl who claimed that he married her; said Mr. Rimmon had performed the ceremony She was crazy. I saw Mr. Rimmon's letter denying the whole thing."

"Do you know his handwriting?" inquired Keith, grimly.

"Whose?"

"Well, that of both of them?"

She nodded, and Keith, taking out his pocket-book, opened it and took therefrom a slip of paper. "Look at that. I got that a few days ago from the witness who was present."

"Why, what is this?" She sprang up in her excitement.

"It is incredible!" she said slowly. "Why, he told me the story with the utmost circ.u.mstantiality."

"He lied to you," said Keith, grimly. "And Rimmon lied. That is their handwriting. I have had it examined by the best expert in New York City.

I had not intended to use that against him, but only to clear the character of that poor young creature whom he deceived and then abandoned; but as he is defaming her here, and is at his old trade of trying to deceive women, it is time he was shown up in his true colors."

She gave a shudder of horror, and wiped her right hand with her left.

"Oh, to think that he dared!" She wiped her hand on her handkerchief.