"He is in the smoking-room with five or six other tobacco misanthropes.

What do you want of him?"

"I want to say two words in his ear; after which I shall vanish and make room for my betters."

Miss Van Brock was gazing steadfastly at the impa.s.sioned face lighted by the piano candles.

"Is it about Miss Brentwood?" she asked abruptly.

"In a way--yes," he confessed.

She rose and stood beside him--a bewitching figure of a woman who knew her part in the human comedy and played it well.

"Is it wise, David?" she asked softly. "I am not denying the possibilities: you might come between them if you should try--I'm rather afraid you could. But you mustn't, you know; it's too late. You've marred her, between you; or rather that convention, which makes a woman deaf, blind and dumb until a man has fairly committed himself, has marred her.

For your sake she can never be quite all she ought to be to him: for his sake she could never be quite the same to you."

He drew apart from her, frowning.

"If I should say that I don't fully understand what you mean?" he rejoined.

"I should retort by saying something extremely uncomplimentary about your lack of perspicacity," she cut in maliciously.

"I beg pardon," he said, a little stiffly. "You are laboring under an entirely wrong impression. What I have to say to Mr. Brookes Ormsby does not remotely concern the matter you touch upon. It's an affair of the Stock Exchange."

"As if I didn't know!" she countered. "You merely reminded me of the other thing. But if it is only a business secret you may as well tell me all about it at first hands. Some one is sure to tell me sooner or later."

Now David Kent was growing impatient. Down in the inner depths of him he was persuaded that Ormsby might have difficulty in inducing Mrs. Brentwood to sell her Western Pacific stock even at an advance; might require time, at least. And time, with a Bucks majority tinkering with corporate rights in the a.s.sembly, might well be precious.

"Forgive me if I tell Ormsby first," he pleaded. "Afterward, if you care to know, you shall."

Miss Van Brock let him go at that, but now the way to the smoking-den on the floor above was hedged up. He did battle with the polite requirements, as a man must; shaking hands or exchanging a word with one and another of the obstructors only as he had to. None the less, when he had finally wrought his way to the smoking-room Ormsby had eluded him again.

He went back to the parlors, wondering how he had missed the club-man. In the middle room of the suite he found Portia chatting with Marston, the lieutenant-governor; and a young woman in the smartest of reception gowns had succeeded to Elinor's place at the piano.

"You found him?" queried the hostess, excusing herself to the tall, saturnine man who had shared the honors at the head of the People's Party ticket with Jasper G. Bucks.

"No," said Kent. "Have you seen him?"

"Why, yes; they all came to take leave just a few moments after you left me. I thought of telling Mr. Ormsby you were looking for him, but you shut me off so snippily----"

"Miss Van Brock! What have you done? I must go at once."

"Really? I am complimented. But if you must, you must, I suppose. I had something to tell you--something of importance; but I can't remember what it was now. I never can remember things in the hurry of leave-takings."

As we have intimated, Kent had hitherto found Miss Portia's confidences exceedingly helpful in a business way, and he hesitated. "Tell me," he begged.

"No, I can't remember it: I doubt if I shall ever remember it unless you can remind me by telling me why you are so desperately anxious to find Mr.

Ormsby."

"I wonder if you hold everybody up like this," he laughed. "But I don't mind telling you. Western Pacific preferred has gone to fifty-eight and a half."

"And Mr. Ormsby has some to sell? I wish I had. Do you know what I'd do?"

She drew closer and laid a hand on his arm. "I'd sell--by wire--to-night; at least, I'd make sure that my telegram would be the first thing my broker would lay his hands on in the morning."

"On general principles, I suppose: so should I, and for the same reason.

But have I succeeded in reminding you of that thing you were going to tell me?"

"Not wholly; only partly. You said this matter of Mr. Ormsby's concerned Miss Brentwood--in a way--didn't you?"

"You will have your pound of flesh entire, won't you? The stock is hers, and her mother's and sister's. I want Ormsby to persuade them to sell.

They'll listen to him. That is all; all the all."

"Of course!" she said airily. "How simple of me not to have been able to add it up without your help. I saw the quotation in the evening paper; and I know, better, perhaps, than you do, the need for haste. Must you go now?" She had taken his arm and was edging him through the press in the parlors toward the entrance hall.

"_You_ haven't paid me yet," he objected.

"No; I'm trying to remember. Oh, yes; I have it now. Wasn't some one telling me that you are interested in House Bill Twenty-nine?"

They had reached the dimly lighted front vestibule, and her hand was still on his arm.

"I was interested in it," he admitted, correcting the present to the past tense.

"But after it went to the House committee on judiciary you left it to more skilful, or perhaps we'd better say, to less scrupulous hands?"

"I believe you are a witch. Is there anything you don't know?"

"Plenty of things. For example, I don't know exactly how much it cost our good friends of the 'vested interests' to have that bill mislaid in the committee room. But I do know they made a very foolish bargain."

"Beyond all doubt a most demoralizing bargain, which, to say the best of it, was only a choice between two evils. But why foolish?"

"Because--well, because mislaid things have a way of turning up unexpectedly, you know, and--"

He stopped her in a sudden gust of feverish excitement.

"Tell me what you mean in one word, Miss Van Brock. Don't those fellows intend to stay bought?"

She smiled pityingly.

"You are very young, Mr. David--or very honest. Supposing those 'fellows', as you dub the honorable members of the committee on judiciary, had a little plan of their own; a plan suggested by the readiness of certain of their opponents to rush into print with statements which might derange things?"

"I am supposing it with all my might."

"That is right; we are only supposing, you must remember. We may suppose their idea was to let the excitement about the amended bill die down; to let people generally, and one fiercely honest young corporation attorney in particular, have time to forget that there was such a thing as House Bill Twenty-nine. And in such a suppositional case, how much they would be surprised, and how they would laugh in their sleeves, if some one came along and paid them handsomely for doing precisely what they meant to do."

David Kent's smile was almost ferocious.

"My argument is as good now as it was in the beginning: they have yet to reckon with the man who will dare to expose them."

She turned from him and spoke to the footman at the door.