"Nonsense! Shepler asked her last night to marry him."

"It's bewildering! I never dreamed--"

"I've expected it for months. I could tell you the very moment when the idea first seized the man--on the yacht last summer. I was sure she interested him, even before his wife died two years ago."

"Margaret, it's too good to be true!"

"If you think it is I'll tell you something that isn't: Avice practically refused him."

Her husband pushed away his plate; the omission of even one regretful glance at its treasures betrayed the strong emotion under which he laboured.

"This is serious," he said, quietly. "Let us get at it. Tell me if you please!"

"She came to me and cried half the night. She refused him definitely at first, but he begged her to consider, to take a month to think it over--"

Milbrey gasped. Shepler, who commanded markets to rise and they rose, or to fall and they fell--Shepler begging, entreating a child of his!

Despite the soul-sickening tragedy of it, the situation was not without its element of sublimity.

"She will consider; she _will_ reflect?"

"You're guessing now, and you're as keen at that as I. Avice is not only amazingly self-willed, as you intimated a moment since, but she is intensely secretive. When she left me I could get nothing from her whatever. She was wretchedly sullen and taciturn."

"But why _should_ she hesitate? Shepler--Rulon Shepler! My G.o.d! is the girl crazy? The very idea of hesitation is preposterous!"

"I can't divine her. You know she has acted perversely in the past. I used to think she might have some affair of which we knew nothing--something silly and romantic. But if she had any such thing I'm sure it was ended, and she'd have jumped at this chance a year ago.

You know yourself she was ready to marry young Bines, and was really disappointed when he didn't propose."

"But this is too serious." He tinkled the little silver bell.

"Find out if Miss Avice will be down to breakfast."

"Yes, sir."

"If she's not coming down I shall go up," declared Mr. Milbrey when the man had gone.

"She's stubborn," cautioned his wife.

"Gad! don't I know it?"

Jarvis returned.

"Miss Avice won't be down, sir, and I'm to fetch her up a pot of coffee, sir."

"Take it at once, and tell her I shall be up to see her presently."

Jarvis vanished.

"I think I see a way to put pressure on her, that is if the morning hasn't already brought her back to her senses."

At four o'clock that afternoon, Avice Milbrey's ring brought Mrs. Van Geist's butler to the door.

"Sandon, is Aunt Cornelia at home?"

"Yes, Miss Milbrey, she's confined to her room h'account h'of a cold, miss."

"Thank heaven!"

"Yes, miss--certainly! will you go h'up to her?"

"And Mutterchen, dear, it was a regular bombsh.e.l.l," she concluded after she had fluttered some of the November freshness into Mrs. Van Geist's room, and breathlessly related the facts.

"You demented creature! I should say it must have been."

"Now, don't lecture!"

"But Shepler is one of the richest men in New York."

"Dad already suspects as much."

"And he's kind, he's a big-hearted chap, a man of the world, generous--a--"

"'A woman fancier,' Fidelia Oldaker calls him."

"My dear, if he fancies you--"

"There, you old conservative, I've heard all his good points, and my duty has been written before me in letters of fire. Dad devoted three hours to writing it this morning, so don't, please, say over any of the moral maxims I'm likely to have heard."

"But why are you unwilling?"

"Because--because I'm wild, I fancy--just because I don't like the idea of marrying that man. He's such a big, funny, round head, and positively no neck--his head just rolls around on his big, pillowy shoulders--and then he gets little right at once, tapers right off to a point with those tiny feet."

"It isn't easy to have everything."

"It wouldn't be easy to have him, either."

Mrs. Van Geist fixed her niece with a sudden look of suspicion.

"Has--has that man anything to do with your refusal?"

"No--not a thing--I give you my word, auntie. If he had been what I once dreamed he was no one would be asking me to marry him now, but--do you know what I've decided? Why, that he is a joke--that's all--just a joke. You needn't think of him, Mutterchen--I don't, except to think it was funny that he should have impressed me so--he's simply a joke."

"I could have told you as much long ago."

"Tell me something now. Suppose Fred marries that Wybert woman."

"It will be a sorry day for Fred."

"Of course! Now see how I'm pinned. Dad and the mater both say the same now--they're more severe than I was. Only we were never in such straits for money. It must be had. So this is the gist of it: I ought to marry Rulon Shepler in order to save Fred from a marriage that might get us into all sorts of scandal."

"Well?"