afternoon. I told you, then, to inform Mr. Duncan that you would meet his requirements. Later, when I realized that he had overheard us—"

"What's the matter with you, Pat?" demanded the father, interrupting her with a touch of anger. "Have you lost your head, entirely?"

"No," she replied, with utter calmness; "I have only lost my Dad. I went down to his office this afternoon to see him, and I left him there. Just now, I have been instructing Mr. Melvin concerning the particulars of the agreement I want drawn and signed in the transaction that is to take place between you and Roderick Duncan, in which I am, personally, so deeply concerned, in which I am to figure as the collateral security."

The old man stared at his daughter, with an expression that had made many a Wall-street financier turn pale with apprehension. It was a grim visage that she saw then—hard and set, stern and unrelenting, and many a strong man had surrendered to Stephen Langdon, frightened by the aspect of it. Not so this daughter of his. She met his gaze unflinchingly and calmly, without a change in her outward demeanor. After a moment, Langdon turned with a shrug toward the lawyer.

"Melvin," he said, "how many years have you been my attorney?"

"Fourteen, I think, Mr. Langdon," was the smiling reply. One would have thought that the man of law found something highly amusing in this incident.

"About that—yes. Well, do you see that door?" He half-turned and indicated the entrance he had just used. "Melvin, I want you to pick up those papers and tell John, outside, to give you your hat; then I want you to get out of here as quick as God'll let you. If you don't, our relations are severed from this moment. And if you complete the draft of those papers, without my permission, or submit them to any person whatever, without my having seen them first, I will have another attorney to replace you, Monday morning. Go right along now. You needn't answer me. If you don't want my business, all you've got to do is to say so. If you do want it, you'll come mighty near doing what I have told you to do, just now."

The lawyer, quietly, but with dignity, rose from his chair, folded the papers, placed them in an inner pocket of his coat, bowed to Patricia and then to her father, and without a word passed from the room, closing the door quietly behind him; but before he quite accomplished this last act, the clear even tones of the girl called after him:

"I am sure, Mr. Melvin, that we had quite concluded our conference. I will ask you please to draw those papers as I have directed. You may submit copies to Mr. Langdon at the time you bring the originals to me."

He did not answer, for there was no occasion to do so, and a second later Stephen Langdon and his daughter were alone together for the second time that afternoon.

"Now, Patricia," he said, turning toward her, with his feet wide apart and his hands thrust deep into his trousers-pockets, "what in blazes is this all about?"

His daughter replied coldly and precisely:

"I have merely been dictating to your lawyer the substance of the conditions I wish to have embodied in the papers that are to complete the transaction we have discussed at your office. I selected Mr. Melvin because I knew him to be in your confidence, and I surmised that you would prefer that the condition of affairs under which you are now struggling, which forces you to borrow twenty-million dollars, should not be made known to an outsider."

"Well, I'll tell you that I won't hear of it! It's got to stop right now. I won't have those papers drawn at all. I won't have it. The whole thing is preposterous, and you seem to be determined to make a fool of yourself. I won't have it!"

"But you must have it," she said, quietly.

"Must have it? Patricia, there isn't a man in the city of New York who dares to say that to me."

"Possibly not, sir; but there is a woman in New York who dares to say it to you, and who does say it, here and now. That woman is, unfortunately, your daughter."

"Patricia! Are you crazy?"

"No; but I am more hurt and angry, more outraged and incensed, than I believed it possible ever to be. I shall insist upon the drawing of those papers, and the fulfillment of the stipulations I have directed. If you are determined that Mr. Melvin shall not finish what he has begun for me, I shall select another lawyer, and shall have the papers drawn just the same."

"But, my child, it is all foolishness. The papers are not necessary. Roderick will supply what cash I need without anything of that sort, and you know it!"

"Am I to understand, sir, that you have lied to me?"

Langdon dropped upon a chair, breathing an oath which his daughter did not hear, and she continued, without awaiting a reply from him:

"You have taught me, since I was a child, that in a business transaction in the Street, where there is no time for the drawing of papers, a man must live up to his word, absolutely. I took you seriously in what occurred at your office this afternoon. I surmised, when we were near the end of our interview,—nay, I assumed it—that Roderick Duncan was inside the inner office. My surmise proved to be true, and now I have only this to say: We shall carry out the transaction precisely as it was stipulated between us, and according to the papers I have dictated to Mr. Melvin, or I shall go to another lawyer and have those same papers drawn and offered to you and to Mr. Duncan, for your signatures. He overheard our conversation, and thus became a party to it. I was forced into the situation without my consent, and I shall now insist upon a certain recognition of my rights in the matter. If you choose to deny me those rights, the fact will not deter me from proceeding in my own way—a way which Mr. Melvin, your attorney, thoroughly understands. I have explained it fully to him."

The old man leaned back in his chair, glaring at his daughter, and yet in that burning gaze of his there was undoubted admiration. He liked her pluck, and deep down in his heart he gloried in her ability to maintain the position she had assumed, where she literally held him helpless. For it would never do that she should be permitted to go to another lawyer; such a proceeding would betray to other parties the financial embarrassment into which he had been drawn. The news would get out. There would be a whisper here, a murmur there, and before noon on Monday, all New York would know it. His daughter understood her momentary power over him, and she was determined to make the most of it.

Patricia returned her father's gaze for a moment, then turned negligently away and moved toward the door.

"Wait," he called to her.

"Well?" She stopped, and half-turned.

"Don't you know, girl, that the whole business was tomfoolery?"

"No; and I would not believe you, or Mr. Duncan—now."

"Wait just a minute longer, Patricia; let me explain this thing to you, fully. Let me make you understand just how it came about," her father exclaimed. "It was all a mistake, you know, and I must confess that the mistake was mostly mine. Of course, Roderick was ready to let me have the twenty millions, or fifty if I had asked for them. There was never any doubt about that, and could have been none. He has the money, and there never has been a time, since he inherited it, when I could not use it as if it were my own. You knew that. I have never hesitated to go to him, either. That is why I went to him to-day. Before I had an opportunity to explain the purpose of my call, he asked about you, and the question suggested to my mind the idea of utilizing the desperate situation I was in to hasten your marriage to him. You know how I have looked forward to that. I have known, or at least I have supposed I knew, for years, that you thought more of him than of anyone else. You are twenty years old now; it is high time that you were married, and it would break my old heart to see you take up with any of those society-beaux who hover around you at