"Please believe me, one and all, I had no thought, no wish to offend Mr.

Conway's pretty daughter Margery. I may as well own the truth. I had fallen desperately in love with the girl and was telling her so, and was just on the point of asking her to accept me as a suitor for her hand when she, mistaking my motives, it appears, called for a.s.sistance, and I was not permitted to speak in order to explain.

"a.s.suring her and all of you that my motives were most honorable, I beg of you to reconsider leaving me in this abrupt fashion. Return to your posts of duty, and this little difficulty will be adjusted satisfactorily to you and to Miss Conway."

Kendale was used to making a hit with an audience--used to throwing his soul, as it were, into anything he had to say.

The effect on the crowd below was magical; for a moment they were stunned.

The old cashier was almost stunned. The young millionaire was just about proposing marriage to Margery! Why, what a mistake he had made--what a terrible mistake! Even Margery had fallen back a step or two and was clinging to her father's hand in the greatest amazement.

"I--I think I was mad, friends and fellow-workers," he exclaimed, huskily. "I believe I was too precipitate in this affair.

"It is so long since I was young I--I had forgotten that it is the custom of men now, as in the years long since gone by, to speak to a maiden of love before he said anything of marriage.

"It did not occur to me that the great millionaire wanted my little girl for his wife, as he now says.

"Hear me, friends, one and all. I most heartily regret causing this disturbance and I move that we return to our places, as our employer suggests."

There was a murmur of a.s.sent among the throng; then, all in a body, they moved forward, entering the building again; and in less than five minutes' time matters were moving on quite as smoothly once more as though no sudden upheaval had ever occurred in the great dry goods establishment.

Mr. Conway, however, was too upset to attend further to his duties that afternoon, and accepted the manager's suggestion that he should go to his home, Margery accompanying him.

Meanwhile Kendale had thrown himself down into the nearest chair, breathing hard, feeling like a general who had achieved a most wonderful victory.

"A few soft, silvery words saved me this time," he muttered, "but it throws the girl on my hands. Well, I suppose I will have to propose marriage to her now--every one expects it; there would be a terrible rumpus kicked up if I did not. Well, let there be an engagement between us; that doesn't mean that there will be a marriage, by any means. The engagement can drag along three or four years, and then we can break off. By that time I shall be ready to marry the heiress of the Fairfax millions. Ah, how much easier it is to scheme for a fortune than to toil for one, as most poor mortals do."

The entrance of the manager with the bill for the hundred and twenty-five thousand put an end to his musings and plans for the present. Mr. Wright emerged from the office ten minutes later with a very troubled expression on his face. It was dearly patent to him that Mr. Lester Armstrong did not care how badly the business was crippled, so long as he secured the yacht and the fast horses.

From that first day, so full of awkward and almost fatal mistakes, Kendale spent as little time as was absolutely necessary in the establishment of Marsh & Company, as it was still called, preferring to let all of the business cares fall upon the manager's already weighted shoulders.

In less than a week it was noised about social circles that the young man who had so suddenly dropped into millions of money was something of a sport--a yachtsman whose magnificent yachting parties were the wonder of the metropolis; a horseman whose racing stables were second to none and were worth a handsome fortune; and it was hinted that he seemed no stranger at cards and gambled sums of gold that would have purchased a king's ransom at a single game--until those who looked on in speechless wonder were sure he must have exhaustless wealth. Every one prophesied, however, that this reckless extravagance must have an ending some time.

Meanwhile society held out its arms to the young millionaire, welcoming him with its sweetest smiles.

The date which he had set to dine with the Fairfaxes, of Beechwood, rolled around at last, and for once in his life Kendale, or rather the bogus Lester Armstrong, was punctual in his appointment.

He was ushered into a drawing-room of such magnificence that for a moment he fairly caught his breath in wonder.

"So this was the home of Faynie Fairfax, the girl whom I wedded in the old church and who died so suddenly on her bridal eve," he soliloquized.

"Well, all this could be mine for the fighting for it as Faynie's husband, who has survived her, but, as Halloran would say, 'It's a deal easier getting the same fortune by marrying the stepmother's daughter, who has come into it by Faynie's father cutting her off at the eleventh hour.'

"I wonder what the girl Claire is like."

There was a portrait of a young girl done in water colors over the mantel. He stepped over to examine it.

"If this is Claire's portrait she's certainly not bad looking," he mused, "but she is one I should not care to cross."

The figure was slight, draped in a gown of some light, airy fabric. The head was small, crowned in a ma.s.s of waving dark hair. The contour of the face was perfect; a pair of deep gray eyes looked out of it straight at you; the lips were small, but a little too compressed, showing that the owner of them had certainly a will of her own, which it was neither wise nor best to cross.

He was startled from his contemplation by the sound of silken robes rustling across the carpet, and, wheeling suddenly about, he was confronted by a tall, slim, magnificent woman, who welcomed him most graciously to Fairfax House.

"My daughter Claire will join us in a very few minutes. Ah, she is here now," she announced, as a swift step was heard in the corridor outside; a moment later the portieres parted, and the young girl whose portrait he had been critically a.n.a.lyzing entered the room.

"I shall know at once by the first words he utters whether I shall like him or not," thought the girl, looking straight into his face with her fearless, keen, gray eyes. "He is handsome, and that generally goes with great conceit, Faynie always said."

"I hope we shall be friends, Miss Fairfax," he said, extending his hand and bowing low over the little brown one that lay for an instant in his palm.

"There is a great mistake evident at the outset," said the girl, looking up into his face. "Mamma said just now: 'This is my daughter Claire.' I think mamma intended to add, 'Miss Claire Stanhope.' Mr. Fairfax was my steppapa."

Kendale smiled amusedly, both at the mother's momentary discomfiture and the young girl's brusque straightforwardness.

"I like her better than any one I have ever met. I shall marry her," he promised himself.

CHAPTER XXII.

CLAIRE'S LOVER.

During the dinner that followed Kendale longed to introduce the subject of "Faynie," but found no opening. His eagerness to know what they thought and what they had to say concerning her disappearance was intense, but he had to bide his time to find out.

Meanwhile he paid the most flattering attention to Claire.

He had noticed with a keen sense of regret that the girl limped most painfully in her walk, but, despite this defect, for the first time in his reckless life, he was thoroughly fascinated with her.

He took his leave early, promising them that he would certainly avail himself of their gracious permission to call again, very, very soon.

Long after his departure the mother and daughter still sat in the drawing-room discussing him eagerly.

"It is a good thing for you that Faynie declines to come down to the drawing-room to see visitors and insists upon having her meals in her own room. If she had seen this handsome Mr. Armstrong, you would have stood little chance of winning him, my dear," declared Mrs. Fairfax.

Claire rose slowly to her feet, turned and faced her mother.

"You and I do not agree on that point, mamma," she said, quickly, "I have what you call a Quixotic notion, perhaps, and that is that we are attracted toward those whom Heaven intended for us, and if this be so he would not have been attracted toward Faynie if he were intended for me."

"We will not argue the matter, Claire, for we shall never agree,"

declared her mother, adding: "I shall always be opposed to Mr. Armstrong meeting Faynie or ever hearing one word concerning the existence of such a person. If he should, mind, I predict harm will come of it."

Those were the words that rang in Claire's ears long after she retired to her room.

"I shall tell Faynie that we had a caller last evening and how handsome he was; but I shall take good care to follow mamma's advice and never let her know his name," the girl ruminated.

She was only a young girl, full of girlish enthusiasm, and it was certainly beyond human expectation to believe she could refrain from mentioning that much to Faynie the next morning.

Faynie laid a little white hand on Claire's nut-brown head.

"Take care not to fall too deeply in love with this handsome stranger,"