"I wonder, Nan! I wonder!"

The smile slowly faded, and a frown clouded his brow. The lines of his mouth suddenly tightened.

"I'll settle it to-day," he said with decision, as he rose, took his hat and left for Gramercy Park.

CHAPTER V

AN ISSUE IS FORCED

It was noon when Stuart reached the Primrose house and Nan was again out. He received the announcement from her mother with a feeling of rage he could ill conceal.

"Where is she? I seem never to be able to find her at home."

"Now, don't be absurd, Jim. You know she would have broken any engagement to see you, had she known you were going to call to-day. She has only gone to the dressmaker's."

"How long will she be there?"

"Until four."

"Four hours at a dressmaker's----"

"And then she's going to the hair dressser's."

"And then?"

"She has an engagement for tea. I don't expect her home until seven.

I'm awfully sorry."

"Of course, I understand, Mrs. Primrose," Stuart said with a light laugh, "I should have told her--but I didn't know until a few moments ago that I was coming."

"Nothing serious has happened, I hope?" she asked, with carefully modulated sympathy which said plainly that she hoped for the worst.

"No. Just say that I'll call after dinner."

"All right, Jim, dear," the mother purred. "I'll see that she's here if I have to lock the door."

Stuart smiled in spite of himself as he passed out murmuring:

"Thank you."

It was useless to try to work. His mind was in a tumult of passionate protest. He must have this thing out with Nan once for all. Their engagement must be announced immediately.

He went to the Players' Club and lunched alone in brooding silence. He tried to read and couldn't. He strolled out aimlessly and began to ramble without purpose. Somehow to-day everything on which his eye rested and every sound that struck his ear proclaimed the advent of the new power of which Bivens was the symbol--Bivens with his delicate, careful little hand, his bulging forehead, his dark keen eyes! An ice wagon dashed by. It belonged to the ice trust. A big coal cart blocked the sidewalk. The coal trust was one of the first. The street crossing at Broadway and Twenty-third Street was jammed with a string of delivery waggons from the department stores whose growth had crushed a hundred small trades. The clang of the cars proclaimed the Street Railway Merger and a skyscraper called "The Flatiron" was just raising its giant frame on the little triangle where a half-dozen old-fashioned buildings had stood for generations. Across Madison Square the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company was tearing down a whole block, section by section, and a palace of white marble was slowly rearing its huge form. The passing of an era was plain. He could see the hand of the new mysterious power building a world before his very eyes. Strange he hadn't noticed it until Bivens's dark sneering face this morning, insolent in its conscious strength, had opened his eyes. What chance had his old friend Woodman against such forces?

Yet why should he resent them personally? He was young. The future was his--not the past. He didn't resent them. Of course not. What he did resent was the approach of the particular Juggernaut named John C.

Calhoun Bivens toward the woman he loved. That Bivens should fall hopelessly and blindly in love with Nan at first sight was too stupefying to be grasped at once. She couldn't love such a man--and yet his millions and that slippery mother were a sinister combination. He congratulated himself that his interview with Bivens had put him in possession of a most important secret, and he would force the issue at once.

By evening he had thrown off his depression and met Nan with something of his old gaiety, to which she responded with a touch of coquetry.

"Tell me, Jim," she began with a smile of mischief in her eyes, "why you called at the remarkable hour of twelve noon, to-day? Am I becoming so resistless that work no longer has any charms? You must have something very important to say?" Her eyes danced with the consciousness of her advantage.

"Yes. I have, Nan," he answered soberly, taking her hand. "I want a public announcement of our engagement in to-morrow morning's papers."

"Jim!"

"I mean it."

"But why? You know the one concession, the only one I have ever made to my mother's hostility to you, is that our engagement shall be kept a secret until we are ready to marry. We must play fair."

"I will, we are ready now."

Nan's voice broke into a ripple of laughter.

"Oh, are we?--I didn't know it."

"Yes, that's what I came to tell you," Stuart went on, catching her spirit of fun and pressing her hand. "I've arranged a little trip to the country to-morrow, and I'm going to convince you before we return.

You can go?"

"Of course, I'm open to conviction."

"And you consent to the announcement?"

"To-night?"

"Yes."

"No. You must convince me first. You've planned the trip for that purpose."

"Make the announcement to-night, dear! On my honour I promise to convince you to-morrow that we are ready. I've an argument that never fails--an argument no woman can resist."

"Not to-night, Jim," was the laughing reply.

"Can't you trust me, when I tell you that I've discovered something to-day that makes it necessary?"

The girl looked at him sharply.

"Now, I can't trust you at all! I've got to know the secret of your call this morning. What has happened since we parted last night?"

"I have seen Mr. Bivens."

Nan leaped to her feet, her face flushed, her voice ringing with triumph.

"And you did what I asked you--oh, you're a darling! Why did you tease me so last night? You accepted his offer?"